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WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 



• Cbautauqua IRea&íng Ctrcle Xítcraturc 

FROM 

CHAUCER TO TENNYSON 

WITH TWENTY-NINE PORTRAITS 

AND 

SELECTIONS FROM THIRTY AUTHORS 



BY y- 

HENRY A. BEERS 

Professor of English Litcrature in Vale University 




MEADVILLE PENNA 

FLOOD AND VINCENT 

Cfte ílbautauquaíiíaEentucp ^izU 

NEW YORK : CINCINNATI : CHICAGO : 

150 Fifth Avenue. 222 VV. Fourth St. 57 Washington St. 
T898 







?9^ 



lo : 

Copyright, 1894, 1898 

By FlOOD & VlNCENT 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED- 
3 ^ O O \ 



The Chaidauqua-Century Press, Meadville, Pa., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by Flood & Vincent. 



1898, 



PREFACE. 

In so brief a history of so rich a literature, the prob- 
lem is how to get room enough to give, not an ade- 
quate impression — that is impossible — but any impres- 
sion at all of the subject. To do this I have crowded 
out everything but belles-leitres. Books in philosophy, 
history, science, etc. , hovvever important in the history 
of English thought, receive the merest incidental men- 
tion, or even no mention at all. Again, I have omitted 
the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, which is 
written in a language nearly as hard for a modern 
Englishman to read as Germán is, or Dutch. Caedmon 
and Cynewulf are no more a part of English literature 
than Vergil and Horace are of Italian. I have also 
left out the vernacular literature of the Scotch before 
the time of Burns. Up to the date of the unión Scot- 
land was a sepárate kingdom, and its literature had a 
development independent of the English, though par- 
allel with it. 

In dividing the history into periods, I have followed, 
with some modifications, the divisions made by Mr. 
Stopford Brooke in his excellent little ' ' Primer of Eng- 
lish Literature. ' ' A short reading course is appended 
to each chapter. ^—^ - . 

The brief selections in the appendix-_are, of course, 
not designed to give fuU-Iength illustrations of the 
authors chosen, but only a taste of their quality. 

Henry a. Beers. 



The reqidred books of the C. L. S. C. are reconmiended by 
a Coimcil of six. It niust, however, be understood that 
recommendation does not involve an approval by the Coun- 
cil, or by any member of it, of every principie or doctritie 
contained in the book reconiniended. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I, FrOM THE CONQUEST TO ChAUCER, I066- 

1400 9 

II. From Chaucer TO Spenser, 1400-1599 35 

III. The Age of Shakspere, 1564-1616 . . 63 

IV. The Age of Milton, 1608-1674 . . . 104 
V. From the Restoration to the Death 

OF Pope, i 660-1 744 137 

VI. From the Death of Pope to the 

French Revolution, i 744-1 789 . . 163 

VIL From the French Revolution to 

the Death of Scott, 1789-1832 . . 187 

VIII. From the Death of Scott to the 

Present Time, 1832-1898 225 

Appendix 255 



PORTRAITS. 

WiLLiAM Shakspere Frontispiece 

Facing 
page 

Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Fran- 
gís Bacon, John Milton 72 

John Dryden, Josep'h Addison, Alexander 

Pope, Jonathan Swift 152 

Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Wil- 

liam cowper, robert burns 184 

Robert Southey, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel 

Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey 200 

WlLLIAM WORDSWORTH, GeORGE GoRDON By- 

RON, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats 216 

Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, William 
Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dick- 
ens 232 

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Thomas 
Babington Macaulay, Robert Brown- 
ing, Alfred Tennyson 248 



\ 



C. L. S. C. MOTTOES. 
We Study THE Word and the Works 

OF GOD. 
LeT US KEEP OUR HeAVENLY FaTHER IN 

the midst. , 

Never be Discouraged. 
LooK Up and Lift Up. 



FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON. 

CHAPTER I. 

FrOM THE CONQUEST TO ChAUCER, IO66-I4OO. 

The Norman Conquest of England, in the eleventh 
century, made a break in the natural growth of the 
English language and literature. The Oíd English or 
Anglo-Saxon had been a purely Germanic speech, with influence of 
a complicated grammar and a full set of inflections. co^nqu°esTupon 
Por three hundred years following the battle of Hastings languafe!^ 
this native tongue was driven from the king's court and 
the courts of law, from Parliament, school, and uni- 
versity. During all this time there were tvvo languages 
spoken in England. Norman French was the birth- 
tongue of the upper classes and English of the lower. 
When the latter got the better of the struggle, and 
became, about the middle of the fourteenth century, 
the national speech of all England, it was no longer the 
English of King Alfred. It was a new language, a 
grammarless tongue, almost wholly stripped of its 
inflections. It had lost half of its oíd words, and had 
fiUed their places with French equivalents. The Nor- 
man lawyers had introduced legal terms ; the ladies 
and courtiers words of dress and courtesy. The knight 
had imported the vocabulary of war and of the chase. 
The master-builders of the Norman castles and cathe- 
drals contributed technical expressions proper to the 
architect and the masón. The art of cooking was 



From Chaticer to Tennyson. 



French. The naming of the living animáis, ox, swine, 
sheep, deer, was left to the Saxon churl who had the 
herding of them, while the dressed meats, beef, pork, 
mutton, venison, received their baptism from the table- 
talk of his Norman master. The four orders of begging 
friars, and especially the Franciscans or Gray Friars, 
introduced into England in 1224, became intermediaries 
introduction of ^^^^^^^" ^^^ ^igh and the low. They went about 
French words. preaching to the poor, and in their serm.ons they inter- 
mingled French with EngHsh. In their hands, too, 
was almost all the science of the day ; their medicine, 
botany, and astronoviy displaced the oíd nomenclature 
of leechdom, wort-amning , and star-craft. And, finally, 
the translators of French poems often found it easier to 
transfer a foreign word bodily than to seek out a 
native synonym, particularly when the former supplied 
them with a rhyme. But the innovation reached even 
to the commonest words in every-day use, so that voice 
drove out steven, poor drove out earm, and color, use, 
and place made good their footing beside hue, wont, 
and stead. A great part of the English words that 
were left were so changed in spelling and pronunciation 
as to be practically new. Chaucer stands, in date, 
midway between King Alfred and Alfred Tennyson, 
but his English differs vastly more from the former' s 
than from the latter's. To Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon was 
as much a dead language as it is to us. 

The classical Anglo-Saxon, moreover, had been the 
Wessex dialect, spoken and written at Alfred' s capital, 
Winchester. When the French had displaced this as 
the language of culture, there was no longer a "king's 
English" or any literary standard. The sources of 
modern standard English are to be found in the East 
Midland, spoken in Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- 



Displacement 



Froni the Conqziest to Chaucer. 



bridge, and neighboring shires. Here the oíd Anglian 
had been corrupted by the Danish settlers, and rapidly 
threw oíí its inflections when it became a spoken and no 
longer a written language, after the Conquest. The 
West Saxon, dinging more tenaciously to ancient forms, 
sank into the position of a local dialect ; while the 
East Midland, spreading to London, Oxford, and Cam- 
bridge, became the literary English in which Chaucer 
wrote. 

The Normans brought in also new intellectual in- 
fluences and new forms of literature. They were a 
cosmopolitan people, and they connected England with Newinteiiec- 
the Continent. Lanfranc and Anselm, the first two communkated 

by the 

Norman archbishops of Canterbury, were learned and Normans. 
splendid prelates of a type quite unknown to the 
Anglo-Saxons. They introduced the scholastic phi- 
losophy taught at the University of Paris and the 
reformed discipline of the Norman abbeys. They 
bound the English Church more closely to Rome, and 
officered it with Normans. English bishops were de- 
prived of their sees for illiteracy, and French abbots 
were set over monasteries of Saxon monks. Down to 
the middle of the fourteenth century the learned litera- 
ture of England was mostly in Latin and the polite 
literature in French. English did not at any time empíoyment of 
altogether cease to be a written language, but the French." 
extant remains of the period from 1066 to 1200 are few 
and, with one exception, unimportant. After 1200 
English carne more and more into written use, but 
mainly in translations, paraphrases, and imitations of 
French works. The native genius was at school, and 
followed awkwardly the copy set by its master. 

The Anglo-Saxon poetry, for example, had been 
rhythmical and alliterative. It was commonly written 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Substitution of 
the French for 
the Anglo- 
Saxon verse 
System. 



Continuity of 
the national 
literatura 
interrupted by 
the Conquest. 



The 

Anglo-Saxon 

Chronicle. 



in lines containing four rhythmical accents and with 
three of the accented syllables alliterating. 

i'Peste hiñe thá ^-úm-heort ; réced hlifade 
6"eáp and ^óld-fáh, ^ást inne swáf. 

Rested him then the great-hearted ; the hall towered 
Roomy and gold-bright, the guest slept within. 

This rude, energetic verse the Saxon scóp had sung 
to his harp or glee-bea?n, dwelling on the emphatic 
syllables, passing swiftly over the others, which were of 
undetermined number and position in the line. It was 
now displaced by the smooth métrica! verse with 
rhymed endings, which the French introduced and 
which our modern poets use, a verse fitted to be recited 
rather than sung. The oíd English alliterative verse 
continued, indeed, in occasional use to the sixteenth 
century. But it was linked to a forgotten literature 
and an obsolete dialect, and was doomed to give way. 
Chaucer lent his great authority to the more modern 
verse system, and his own literary models and inspirers 
were all foreign, French or Italian. Literature in 
England began to be once more English and truly 
national in the hands of Chaucer and his contempo- 
raries, but it was the literature of a nation cut ofí from 
its own past by three centuries of foreign rule. 

The most noteworthy English document of the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries was the continuation of 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Copies of these annals, 
diñering somewhat among themselves, had been kept at 
the monasteries in Winchester, Abingdon, Worcester, 
and elsewhere. The yearly entries are mostly brief, 
dry records of passing events, though occasionally they 
become fuU and animated. The fen country of Cam- 
bridge and Lincolnshire was a región of monasteries. 



Fro7n the Conquest to Chaucer. 13 

Here were the great Abbeys of Peterborough and Croy- 
land and Ely Minster. One of the earliest EngHsh 
songs tells how the savage heart of the Danish king 
Cnut was softened by the singing of the monks in Ely. 

Merie sungen muneches binnen Ely 

Tha Cnut chyning reu ther by. 

Roweth, cnihtes, noer the land, 

And here we thes muneches sang. SoneofKi 

Canute and the 
Merríly sung the monks in Ely ""«"^s of Ely. 

When King Canute rowed by. 
"Row, boys, nearer the land, 
And let us hear these monks' song." 

It was among the dikes and marshes of this fen country 
that the bold oudaw Hereward, "the last of the Eng- 
Hsh," held out for some years against the conqueror. 
And it was here, in the rich Abbey of Burgh or 
Peterborough, the ancient Medeshamstede (meadow- Hereward the 
homestead), that the Chronicle was continued nearly a 
century after the Conquest, breaking off abruptly in 
1 1 54, the date of King Stephen's death. Peterborough 
had received a new Norman abbot, Turold, "a very 
stern man," and the entry in the Chronicle for 1070 tells 
how Hereward and his gang, with his Danish backers, 
thereupon plundered the abbey of its treasures, which 
were first removed to Ely, and then carried off by the 
Danish fleet and sunk, lost, or squandered. The Eng- 
lish in the later portions of this Peterborough chronicle 
becomes gradually more modern, and falls away more 
and more from the strict grammatical standards of the 
classical Anglo-Saxon. It is a most valuable historical 
monument, and some passages of it are written with 
great vividness, notably the sketch of William the 
Conqueror put down in the year of his death (1086) by 



Wake. 



14 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Character of 
William the 
Conqueror. 



Anglo-Latin 
chroniclers. 



one who had "looked upon him and at another time 
dwelt in his court." 

He who was before a rich king, and lord of many a land, he 
had not then of all his land but a piece of seven feet. . . . 
Likewise he was a very stark man and a terrible, so that one 
durst do nothing against his will. . . . Among other things is 
not to be forgotten the good peace that he made in this land, so 
that a man might fare over his kingdom with his bosom full of 
gold unhurt. He set up a great deer preserve, and he laid 
laws therewith that whoso should slay hart or hind, he should 
be blinded. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if he were 
their father. 

With the discontinuance of the Peterborough annals, 
English history written in Enghsh prose ceased for 
three hundred years. The thread of the nation's story 
was kept up in Latin chronicles, compiled by writers 
partly of EngHsh and partly of Norman descent. The 
earUest of these, such as Ordericus Vitahs, Simeón of 
Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, and Wilham of Mahnes- 
bury, were contemporary with the later entries of the 
Saxon Chronicle. The last of them, Matthew of West- 
minster, finished his work in 1273. About 1300, 
Robert, a monk of Gloucester, composed a chronicle in 
EngHsh verse, foUowing in the main the authority of 
the Latin chronicles, and he was succeeded by other 
rhyming chroniclers in the fourteenth century. In the 
hands of these the true history of the Saxon times was 
overlaid with an ever-increasing mass of fable and 
legend. All real knowledge of the period dwindled 
away until in Capgraves's "Chronicle of England," 
written in prose in 1463-64, hardly anything of it is left. 
In history as" in literature the English had forgotten 
their past and had turned to foreign sources. It is 
noteworthy that Shakspere, who borrowed his subjects 
and his héroes sometimes from authentic English his- 



From the Conquest to Chaucer, 15 

tory, sometimes from the legendary history of ancient 
Britain, Denmark, and Scotland — as in Lear, Hamlet, 
and Macbeth, respectively — ignores the Saxon period 
altogether. And Spenser, who gives in the second Bntish legend 

° . . usurps the place 

book of his " Faerie Queene" a resume of the reigns of ofEngiishhis- 
fabulous British kings — the supposed ancestors of Queen 
EHzabeth, his royal patrón — has nothing to say of the 
real kings of early England. So completely had the 
true record faded away that it made no appeal to the 
imaginations of our most patriotic poets. The Saxon 
Alfred had been dethroned by the British Arthur, and 
the conquered Welsh had imposed their fictitious gene- 
alogies upon the dynasty of the conquerors. 

In the "Román de Rou," a verse chronicle of the 
dukes of Normandy, written by the Norman Wace, it is 
related that at the battle of Hastings the French 
jongleur, Taillefer, spurred out before the van of 
WilHam's army, tossing his lance in the air and chant- 
ing of ' ' Charlemagne and of Roland, of Oliver and the 
peers who died at Roncesvals." This incident is 
prophetic of the victory which Norman song, no less 
than Norman arms, was to win over England. The 
lines which Taillefer sang were from the ' ' Chanson de 
Roland," the oldest and best of the French hero sagas, 
The heathen Northmen, who had ravaged the coasts of 
France in the tenth century, had become in the course National 
of one hundred and fifty years completely identified Normans. ^ 
with the French. They had accepted Christianity, 
intermarried with the native women, and forgotten their 
own Norse tongue. The race thus formed was the 
most brilliant in Europe. The warlike, adventurous 
spirit of the vikings mingled in its blood with the 
French nimbleness of wit and fondness for display. 
The Normans were a nation of knights-errant, with a spieñdon^" 



i6 



From Chaucer to Tennyso7i. 



French 

nietrical 

romances. 



Inferiority of 
the English 
translations. 



passion for prowess and for courtesy. Their archi- 
tecture was at once strong and graceful. Their women 
were skilled in embroidery, a splendid sample of which 
is preserved in the famous Bayeux tapestry, in which 
the conqueror's wife, Matilda, and the ladies of her 
court wrought the history of the Conquest. 

This national taste for decoration expressed itself not 
only in the ceremonious pomp of feast and chase and 
tourney, but likewise in Hterature. The most char- 
acteristic contribution of the Normans to Enghsh poetry 
were the metrical romances or chivalry tales. These 
were sung or recited by the minstrels, who were among 
the retainers of every great feudal barón, or by the 
jongleurs, who wandered from court to castle. There 
is a whole Hterature of these romans (T avejiíures in the 
Anglo-Norman dialect of French. Many of theni are 
very long — often thirty, forty, or fifty thousand Unes — 
written sometimes in a strophic form, sometimes in 
long Alexandrines, but commonly in the short, eight- 
syllabled rhyming couplet. Numbers of them were 
turned into English verse in the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
and fifteenth centuries. The translations were usually 
inferior to the origináis. The French iroiivere (finder 
or poet) told his story in a straightforward, prosaic 
fashion, omitting no details in the action and unroUing 
endless descriptions of dresses, trappings, gardens, etc. 
He invented plots and situations fuU of fine possibilities 
by which later poets have profited, but his own handling 
of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a sim- 
plicity about the oíd French language and a certain 
elegance and delicacy in the diction of the troiiveres 
which the rude, unformed English failed to catch. 

The héroes of these romances were of various dimes : 
Guy of Warwick, and Richard the Lion Heart of 



From the Conquest to Chaucer. 17 

England, Havelok the Dañe, Sir Troilus of Troy, Char- 

lemagne, and Alexander. But, strangely enough, the 

favorite hero of EngHsh romance was that mythical 

Arthur of Britain, whom Welsh legend had celebrated 

as the most formidable enemy of the Sassenach invaders q-he Anhur 

and their victor in twelve great battles. The language '^s*^"^- 

and literature of the ancient Cymry or Welsh had made 

no impression on their Anglo-Saxon conquerors. There 

are a few Welsh borrowings in the English speech, 

such as bard and dndd ; but in the oíd Anglo-Saxon 

literature there are no more traces of British song and 

story than if the two races had been sundered by the 

ocean instead of being borderers for over six hundred Rejation of 

years. But the Welsh had their own national tra- £^11^1!° 

ditions, and after the Norman Conquest these were set '"erature. 

free from the isolation of their Celtic tongue, and, in an 

indirect form, entered into the general literature of 

Europe. The French came into contact with the oíd 

British literature in two places : in the Welsh marches 

in England and in the province of Brittany in France, 

where the population is of Cymric race, and spoke, and 

still to some extent speaks, a Cymric dialect akin to the 

Welsh. 

About 1 140 Geoñrey of Monmouth, a Benedictine 
monk, seemingly of Welsh descent, who lived at the 
court of Henry I. and became afterward bishop of St. 
Asaph, produced in Latin a so-called "Historia Brito- Geo^revof 
num," in which it was told how Brutus, the great- I^^Hl^todL*"'* 
grandson of ^Eneas, came to Britain, and founded there Britonum." 
his kingdom called after him, and his city of New Troy 
(Troynovant) on the site of the later London. An air 
of historie gravity was given to this tissue of Welsh 
legends by an exact chronology and the genealogy of 
the British kings, and the author referred, as his 



i8 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



authority, to an imaginary Welsh book given him, as 
he said, by a certain Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. 
Here appeared that line of fabulous British princes 
which has become so famiUar to modern readers in the 
plays of Shakspere and the poems of Tennyson : Lear 
and his three daughters ; Cymbeline ; Gorboduc, the 
subject of the earliest regular EngHsh tragedy, com- 
posed by Sackville and acted in 1562 ; Locrine and his 
queen, Gwendolen, and his daughter Sabrina, who gave 
her ñame to the river Severn, was made immortal by an 
exquisite song in Milton's " Comus " and became the 
heroine of the tragedy of "Locrine," once attributed 
to Shakspere ; and, above all, Arthur, the son of Uther 
Pendragon, and the founder of the Table Round. 

In 1 155 Wace, the author of the " Román de Rou," 
turned Geoffrey's work into a French poem entitled 
" Brut d'Angleterre," "brut" being a Welsh word 
meaning chronicle. About the year 1200 Wace's poem 
was Englished by Layamon, a priest of Arley Regis, 
on the border stream of Severn. Layamon' s "Brut" 
is in thirty thousand lines, partly alliterative and partly 
rhymed, but written in puré Saxon English with hardly 
any French words. The style is rude but vigorous, 
and, at times, highly imaginative. Wace had ampli- 
fied Geoffrey's chronicle somewhat, but Layamon made 
much larger additions, derived, no doubt, from legends 
current on the Welsh border. In particular, the story 
of Arthur grevv in his hands into something like fulness. 
He tells of the enchantments of Merlin, the wizard ; of 
the unfaithfulness of Arthur' s queen, Guenever, and 
the treachery of his nephew, Modred. His narration 
of the last great battle between Arthur and Modred ; of 
the wounding of the king — " fifteen fiendly wounds he 
had, one might in the least three gloves thrust ' ' ; and 



From the Conquest to Chaucer. 19 

of the little boat with " two women therein, wonderly 
dight," which carne to bear him away to Avalun and 
the Queen Argante, "sheenest of all elves," whence he 
shall come again, according to Merlin's prophecy, to 
rule the Britons ; all this left little, in essentials, for 
Tennyson to add in his " Passing of Arthur." 

This new material for fiction vvas eagerly seized upon 
by the Norman romancers. The story of Arthur drew 
to itself other stories which were afloat. Walter Map, 
a gentleman of the court of Henry II., in two French ^^'[h*^ ^Xi - 
prose romances connected with it the church legend of Graii." 
the Sangreal, or holy cup, from which Christ had 
drunk at his last supper, and which Joseph of Arima- 
thea had afterward brought to England. Then it 
miraculously disappeared and became thenceforth the 
occasion of knightly quest, the mystic symbol of the 
object of the soul's desire, an adventure only to be 
achieved by the maiden knight, Galahad, the son of 
that Launcelot who in the romances had taken the place 
of Modred in Geoñrey's history as the paramour of 
Queen Guenever. In like manner the love-story of 
Tristan and Isolde, which carne probably from Brittany " Tnstan and 
or Cornwall, was joined by other romancers to the 
Arthur saga. 

Thus there grew up a great epic cycle of Arthurian 
romance, with a fixed shape and a unity and vitality 
which have prolonged it to our own day, and rendered 
it capable of a deeper and more spiritual treatment and 
a more artistic handling by such modern English poets crowth of the 
as Tennyson in his " Idyls of the King," Matthew cycie""^" 
Arnold, Swinburne, and many others. There were 
innumerable Arthur romances in prose and verse, in 
Anglo-Norman and continental French dialects, in 
English, in Germán, and in other tongues. But the 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



final form which the saga took in medieval England 
was the prose " Morte Dartur " of Sir Thomas Malory, 
composed at the cióse of the fifteenth century. This 
was a digest of the earlier romances, and is Tennyson' s 
main authority. 

Beside the literature of the knight was the literature 
of the cloister. There is a considerable body of re- 
ligious writing in early English, consisting of homilies 
in prose and verse, books of devotion, like the "Ancren 
Riwle" (Rule of Anchoresses), 1225, and the "Ayen- 
bite of Inwyt " (Remorse of Conscience), 1340, in 
prose; the " Handlyng Sinne," 1303, the "Cursor 
Mundi," 1320, and the " Pricke of Conscience," 1340, 
in verse ; metrical renderings of the Psalter, the Pater- 
nóster, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments ; the 
Gospels for the Day, such as the "Ormulum," or 
Book of Orm, 1205 ; legends and miracles of saints ; 
poems in praise of virginity, on the contempt of the 
world, on the five joys of the Virgin, the five wounds of 
Christ, the eleven pains of hell, the seven deadly sins, 
the fifteen tokens of the coming judgment ; and dia- 
logues between the soul and the body. These were 
the work not only of th# monks, but also of the 
begging friars, and in smaller part of the secular or 
parish clergy. They are full of the ascetic piety and 
superstition of the Middle Age, the childish belief in the 
marvelous, the allegorical interpretation of Scripture 
texts, the grotesque material horrors of hell with its 
grisly fiends, the vileness of the human body and the 
loathsome details of its corruption after death. Now 
and then a single poem rises above the tedious and 
hideous barbarism of the general level of this monkish 
literature, either from a more intensely personal feeling in 
the poet, or from an occasional grace or beauty in his 



Froni the Conquest to Chaucer. 



verse. A poem so distinguished is, for example, "A 
Luve Ron" (A Love Counsel) by the Minorite friar, ^^íeTs'^A 
Thomas de Hales, one stanza of vvhich recalls the French Luve Ron." 
poet Villon's "Balade of Dead Ladies," with its refrain : 

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan ? 
Where are the snows of yester year ? 

Where is Paris and Heléyne 

That weren so bright and fair of blee* 
Amadas, Tristan, and Idéyne 

Yseudé and alié the," 
Hector with his sharpé main. 

And Cassar rich in woddés fee ? 
They beth ygliden out of the reign* 

As the shaft is of the clee.* 

A few early EngHsh poems on secular subjects are also 
worthy of mention, among others, "The Ovvl and the "TheOwiand 
Nightingale," generally assigned to the reign of Henry ga^e!-'^**""" 
III, (i 216-1272), an estrif, or dispute, in which the owl 
representa the ascetic and the nightingale the sesthetic 
vievv of life. The debate is conducted with much 
animation and a spirited use of proverbial wisdom. 
" The Land of Cokaygne " is an amusing little poem of 

, , ,• 1 , • ,1 £ "The Land of 

some two hundred lines, belonguig to the class or Cokaygne." 

fabliaux, short humorous tales or satirical pieces in 

verse. It describes a lubber-land, or fool's paradise, 

where the geese fly down all roasted on the spit, bring- 

ing garlic in their bilis for their dressing, and where 

there is a nunnery upon a river of svveet milk, and an 

abbey of white monks and gray, whose walls, like the 

hall of little King Pepin, are " of pie-crust and pastry 

crust," with flouren cakes for the shingles and fat 

puddings for the pins. 

There are a few songs dating from about 1300, and 

1 Hue. 2 Those. 3 Realm. 4 Bowstring. 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



mostly found in a single coUection (Harl. MS., 2253), 
which are almost the only English verse before Chaucer 
that has any sweetness to a modern ear. They are 
written in French strophic forms in the southern dialect, 
and sometimes have an intermixture of French and 
Latin lines. They are musical, fresh, simple, and many 
of them very pretty. They celébrate the gladness of 
spring with its cuckoos and throstlecocks, its daisies 
and woodruff. 

When the nightingalé sings the woodés waxen green ; 
Leaf and grass and blossora spring in Averil, I ween, 
And love is to my herté gone with a spear so keen, 
Night and day my blood it drinks, my herté doth me teñe.'' 

Others . are love plaints to ' ' Alysoun ' ' or some other 
lady whose "ñame is in a note of the nightingalé"; 
whose eyes are as gray as glass, and her skin as ' ' red 
as rose on ris. ' ' * Some employ a burden or refrain. 

Blow, northern wind, 

Blow thou me my sweeting, 

Blow, northern wind, blow, blow, blow ! 

Others are touched with a light melancholy at the 
coming of winter. 

Winter wakeneth all my care 

Now these leavés waxeth bare, 

Oft I sigh and mourné sare 

When it cometh in my thought 

Of this worldés joy, how it goeth all to nought. 

Some of these poems are love songs to Christ or the 
Virgin, composed in the warm language of earthly 
passion. The sentiment of chivalry united with the 
ecstatic reverles of the cloister had produced Mariolatry, 
and the imagery of the Song of Solomon, in which 



From the Conqiiest to Chaucer. 23 

Christ woos the soul, had made this feeling of divine 

love familiar. Tovvard the end of the thirteenth cen- 

tury a coUection of Uves of saints, a sort of EngHsh 

' ' Golden Legend, ' ' was prepared at the great Abbey of 

Gloucester for use on saints' days. The legends were 

chosen partly from the hagiology of the Church Cathohc, 

as the hves of Margaret, Christopher, and Michael ; 

pardy from the calendar of the English Church, as the Jo'}fg(,^¡'°"o7'^'' 

lives of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and of the Anglo- saints- legends. 

Saxons, Dunstan, Swithin — who is mentioned by Shak- 

spere — and Kenelm, whose life is quoted by Chaucer in 

"The Nonne Preestes Tale." The verse was clumsy 

and the style monotonous, but an imaginative touch 

here and there has furnished a hint to later poets. 

Thus the legend of St. Brandan' s search for the earthly 

paradise has been treated by Matthew Arnold and 

William Morris. 

About the middle of the fourteenth century there was 
a revival of the Oíd English alliterative verse in romances 
like "William and the Werewolf" and "Sir Gawayne," 
and in religious pieces such as "Clannesse" (Purity), 
" Patience," and "The Perle," the last named a mysti- 
cal poem of much beauty, in which a bereaved father 
sees a visión of his daughter among the glorified. Some 
of these employed rhyme as well as alliteration. They 
are in the West Midland dialect, although Chaucer 
implies that alUteration was most common in the north. 
"I am a sotherne man," says the parson in "The 
Canterbury Tales." "I cannot geste rom, ram, ruf, 
by letter." But the most important of the alliterative 
poems was the ' ' Vision of William concerning Piers 
the Plowman." 

In the second half of the fourteenth century French 
had ceased to be the mother-tongue of any considerable 



Revival of 
alliterative 
verse. 



24 



F7-om Chaucer to Tennyson. 



part of the population of England. By a statute of 
Edward III., in 1362, it was displaced from the law 
courts. By 1386 English had taken its place in the 
schools. The Anglo-Norman dialect had grown cor- 
rupt, and Chaucer contrasts the French of Paris with 
the provincial French spoken by his prioress, "after 
the scole of Stratford-atte-Bovve." The native English 
genius was also beginning to assert itself, roused in 
part, perhaps, by the English victories in the wars of 
Edward III. against the French. It was the bows of 
the English yeomanry that won the fight at Crecy, 
fuUy as much as the prowess of the Norman baronage. 
But at home the times were bad. Heavy taxes and the 
repeated visitations of the pestilence, or Black Death, 
pressed upon the poor and wasted the land. The 
church was corrupt ; the mendicant orders had grown 
enormously wealthy, and the country was eaten up by 
a swarm of begging friars, pardoners, and apparitors. 
That social discontent was fermenting among the lower 
classes which finally issued in the communistic uprising 
of the peasantry under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. 

This State of things is reflected in the ' ' Vision of 
Piers Plowman," written as early as 1362, by William 
Langland, a tonsured clerk of the west country. It is 
in form an allegory, and bears some resemblance to the 
later and more famous allegory of the " Pilgrim's 
Progress." The poet falls asleep on the Malvern Hills, 
in Worcestershire, and has a visión of a " fair field fuU 
of folk," representing the world with its various con- 
ditions of men. There were pilgrims and palmers ; 
hermits with hooked staves, who went to Walsingham 
— and their wenches after them — great lubbers and long 
that were loth to work ; friars glossing the Cospel for 
their own profit ; pardoners cheating the people with 



Prom the Conquest to Chaucer. 25 

relies and indulgences ; parish priests who forsook their 

parishes — that had been poor since the pestilence time 

— and went to London to sing there for simony ; 

bishops, archbishops, and deacons, who got themselves Anaiysis of the 

fat clerkships in the Exchequer, or King's Bench ; in 

short, all manner of lazy and corrupt ecclesiastics. A 

lady, who represents holy church, then appears to the 

dreamer, explains to him the meaning of his visión, and 

reads him a sermón the text of which is, ' ' When all An aiiegoncaí 

visión of the 

treasure is tried, truth is the best. ' ' A number of other worid. 
allegorical figures are next introduced, Conscience, 
Reason, Meed, Simony, Falsehood, etc., and after a 
series of speeches and adventures, a second visión 
begins in which the seven deadly sins pass before the 
poet in a succession of graphic impersonations ; and 
finally all the characters set out on a pilgrimage in 
search of Saint Truth, finding no guide to direct them 
save Piers the Plowman, who stands for the simple, 
pious laboring man, the sound heart of the English 
common folk. The poem was originally in eight 
divisions, or "passus," to which was added a con- 
tinuation in three parts, "Vita Do Wel, Do Bet, and 
Do Best." About 1377 the whole was greatly enlarged 
by the author. 

' ' Piers Plowman ' ' was the first extended literary 
work after the Conquest which was purely English in 
character. It owed nothing to France but the alie- splnt"^'^ 
gorical cast which the ' ' Román de la Rose ' ' had made 
fashionable in both countries. But even here such 
personified abstractions as Langland's Fair-speeeh and 
Work-when-time-is remind us less of the Fraunchise, 
Bel-amour, and Fals-semblaunt of the French courtly 
allegories than of Bunyan's Mr. Worldly Wiseman, 
and even of such Puritan ñames as Praise-God Bare- 



26 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Its influence 
and popularity. 



bones and Zeal-of-the-land Busy. The poem ¡s full of 
Englisli moral seriousness, of shrevvd humor, the hatred 
of a lie, the homely EngUsh love for reahty. It has 
Httle unity of plan, but is rather a series of episodes, 
discourses, parables, and scenes. It is all astir with the 
actual life of the time. We see the gossips gathered in 
the ale-house of Betún the brewster, and the pastry 
cooks in the London streets crying, " Hote pies, hote ! 
Good gees and grys. ' Go we diñe, go we ! " Had 
Langland not linked his literary fortunes with an un- 
couth and obsolescent verse, and had he possessed a 
finer artistic sense and a higher poetic imagination, his 
book might have been, like Chaucer' s, among the 
lasting glories of our tongue. As it is, it is forgotten 
by all but professional students of literature and history. 
Its popularity in its own day is shown by the number of 
manuscripts which are extant, and by imitations, such 
as " Piers the Plowman's Crede " (1394) and "The 
Plowman's Tale," for a long time wrongly inserted in 
' ' The Canterbury Tales. ' ' Piers became a kind of 
typical figure, like the French peasant Jacques Bon- 
homme, and was appealed to as such by the Protestant 
reformers of the sixteenth century. 

The attack upon the growing corruptions of the 
church was made more systematically, and from the 
standpoint of a theologian rather than of a popular 
moralist and satirist, by John Wiclif, the rector of 
Lutterworth and professor of divinity in Baliol CoUege, 
Oxford. In a series of Latin and English tracts he 
made war against indulgences, pilgrimages, images, 
oblations, the friars, the pope, and the doctrine of 
transubstantiation. But his greatest service to England 
was his translation of the Bible, the first complete 

1 Pigs. 



Froin the Conqiiest to Chaiccer. 27 

versión in the mother tongue. This he made about 
13S0, with the help of Nicholas Hereford, and a wiciifs Bibie. 
revisión of it was made by another disciple, Purvey, 
some ten years laten There was no knowledge of 
Hebrew or Greek in England at that time, and the 
Wiclifite versions were made not from the original 
tongues but from the Latin Vulgate. In his anxiety to 
malee his rendering cióse, and mindful, perhaps, of the 
warning in the Apocalypse, " If any man shall take 
away from the words of the book of this prophecy, 
God shall take away his part out of the book of life," 
Wiclif followed the Latin order of construction so liter- 
ally as to make rather awkward English, translating, 
for example, ' ' Quid sibi vult hoc somnium ? " by 
" What to itself wole' this sweven?"* Purvey's re- 
visión was somewhat freer and more idiomatic. 

In the reigns of Henry IV. and V. it was forbidden 
to read or to ha ve any of Wiciifs writings. Such of 

, , , , . , 11-11 1 T • Its wide circula- 

them as could be seized were publicly burned. In spite tion andgreat 

• P1-TT11 • 11 1- itifluence on 

of this, copies of his Bible circulated secretly m great 
numbers. Forshall and Madden, in their great edition 
(1850), enumérate one hundred and fifty manuscripts 
which had been consulted by them. Later translators, 
like Tyndale and the makers of the Authorized Versión, 
or " King James' s Bible" (1611), followed Wiciifs 
language in many instances ; so that he was, in truth, 
the first author of our biblical dialect and the founder of 
that great monument of noble English which has been 
the main conservative influence in the mother tongue, 
holding it fast to many strong, pithy words and idioms 
that would else have been lost. In 141 5, some thirty 
years after Wiciifs death, by decree of the Council of 
Constance, his bones were dug up from the soil of wicUf"*'*'"° 

1 Will. 2 Dieani. 



later transla- 
tors. 



Geoffrey 



28 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Lutterworth chancel and burned, and the ashes cast 
into the Swift. '(The brook," says Thomas Fuller, in 
his " Church History," " did convey his ashes into 
Avon ; Avon into Severn ; Severn into the narrow 
seas ; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of 
Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is 
dispersed all the world over. ' ' j 

Although the writings tíiírs-'^far mentioned are of very 
high interest to the student of the English language 
and the historian of English manners and culture, they 
cannot be said to have much importance as mere litera- 
ture. But in Geoffrey Chaucer (died 1400) \ve meet 
Chaucer. with a poct of the first rank, whose works are increas- 

ingly read and will always continué to be a source of 
delight and refreshment to the general reader as vvell as 
a ' ' well of English undefiled ' ' to the professional man 
'of letters. With the exception of Dante, Chaucer was 
the greatest of the poets of medieval Europe, and he 
remains one of the greatest of English poets, and 
certainly the foremost of English story-tellers in verse. 
He was the son of a London vintner, and was in his 
youth in the service of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, one 
of the sons of Edward III. He made a campaign in 
France in 1359-60, when he was taken prisoner. 
Afterward he was attached to the court and recei\'ed 
numerous favors and appointments. He was sent on 
several diplomatic missions by the king, three of them 
to Italy, where, in all probability, he made the acquaint- 
ance of the new Italian literature, the writings of 
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He was appointed at 
difíerent times comptroUer of the wool customs, comp- 
troUer of petty customs, and clerk of the works. He 
sat for Kent in Parliament, and he received pensions 
from three successive kings. He was a man of business 



From the Conqtcest to Chaucer. 29 

as well as books, and he loved men and nature no less 
than study. He knew his world ; he " savv life steadily 
and saw it whole." Living at the center of EngHsh 
social and poHtical Ufe, and resorting to the court of 
Edward III., then the most brilliant in Europe, Chaucer 
vvas an eye-witness to those feudal pomps which fiU the His knowied^e 

1-111 <• 1 • r- r , „ of the world. 

high-colored pages of his contemporary, the French 
chronicler, Froissart. His description of a tournament 
in "The Knightes Tale" is unexcelled for spirit and 
detail. He was familiar with dances, feasts, state 
ceremonies, and all the life of the baronial castle, in 
bower and hall : the ' ' trompes with the loude minstral- 
cie," the heralds, the ladies, and the squires. He 
knew 

What hawkés sitten on the perch above, 

What houndés liggen* on the floor adown. 

But his sympathy reached no less the life of the lowly ; The breadth 

the poor widow in her narrow cottage, and that "trewe sympathies. 

swynkere* and a good," the plowman whom Langland 

had made the hero of his visión. He is, more than all 

English poets, the poet of the lusty spring, of " Aprillé 

with her showrés sweet ' ' and the ' ' foulés song " ; of 

" May with all her flourés and her green " ; of the new 

leaves in the wood, and the meadows new powdered 

with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his ' ' Legend 

of Good Women." A fresh vernal air blows through 

all his pages. 

In Chaucer' s earlier works, such as the translation of 
"The Romaunt of the Rose" (if that be his), "The |;S^Íis 
Boke of the Duchesse," "The Parlament of Foules," ^°rHr/Joemí 
"The Hous of Fame," as well as in "The Legend of 
Good Women," which was later, the inspiration of the 
French court poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth 

1 Lie. 2 Laborar. 



30 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Originality of 
" The Canter- 
bury Tales." 



Plan of the 
work. 



centuries is manifest. He retains in them the medieval 
machinery of allegories and dreams, the elabórate 
descriptions of palaces, temples, portraitures, etc., 
which had been made fashionable in France by such 
poems as Guillaume de Lorris's " Román de la Rose" 
and Jean Machault's "La Fontaine Amoureuse." In 
some of these the influence of Italian poetry is also per- 
ceptible. There are suggestions from Dante, for ex- 
ample, in " The Parlament of Foules " and " The Hous 
of Fame," and " Troilus and Cresseide" is a free hand- 
ling rather than a translation of Boccaccio' s "Filo- 
strato." In all of these there are passages of great 
beauty and forcé. Had Chaucer written nothing else, 
he would still have been remembered as the most accom- 
plished English poet of his time, but he would not have 
risen to the rank which he now occupies, as one of the 
greatest English poets of all time. This position he 
owes to his masterpiece, "The Canterbury Tales." 
Here he abandoned the imitation of foreign models and 
the artificial literary fashions of his age, and wrote of 
real life from his own ripe knowledge of men and things. 
' ' The Canterbury Tales ' ' are a coUection of stories 
written at diñerent times, but put together, probably, 
toward the cióse of his life. The framework into which 
they are fitted is one of the happiest ever devised. A 
number of pilgrims who are going on horseback to the 
shrine of St. Thomas á Becket, at Canterbury, meet at 
the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, a suburb of London. 
The joUy host of the Tabard, Harry Bailey, proposes 
that on their way to Canterbury each of the company 
shall tell two tales, and two more on their way back, 
and that the one who tells the best shall have a supper 
at the cost of the rest when they return to the inn. He 
himself accompanies them as judge and "repórter." 



Its dramatic 
character. 



From the Conqiiest to Chaiicer. 31 

In the setting of the stories there is thus a constant 
feeling of movement and the air of all outdoors. The 
little " head-links " and " end-links " which bind them 
together give incidents of the journey and glimpses of 
the talk of the pilgrims, sometimes amounting, as in 
the prologue of "The Wyf of Bathe," to full and 
almost dramatic character sketches. The stories, too, 
are dramatically suited to the narrators. The general 
prologue is a series of such character sketches, the most 
perfect in English poetry. The portraits of the pil- 
grims are illuminated with the soft brilliancy and the 
minute, loving fidelity of the miniatures in the oíd 
missals, and with the same quaint precisión in traits of 
expression and in costume. The pilgrims are not all 
such as one would meet nowadays at an English inn. 
The presence of a knight, a squire, a yeoman archer, 
and especially of so many kinds of ecclesiastics, a nun, lUustrations of 
a friar, a monk, a pardoner, and a sompnour or appari- socfety. 
tor, reminds us that the England of that day must have 
been less like Protestant England, as we know it, than 
like the Italy of some fifty years ago. But, however 
the outward face of society may have changed, the 
Canterbury pilgrims remain, in Chaucer's descriptions, 
living and universal types of human nature. ' ' The 
Canterbury Tales ' ' are twenty-four in number. There 
were thirty-two pilgrims, so that if finished as designed 
the whole coUection would have numbered one hundred 
and twenty-eight stories. 

Chaucer is the bright consummate flower of the Eng- 
lish Middle Age. Like many another great poet he 
put the final touch to the various literary forms that he 
found in cultivation. Thus his "Knightes Tale," based 
upon Boccaccio' s "Teseide," is the best of English 
medieval romances. And yet ' ' The Rime of Sir Tho- 



32 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Variety of 
literary forms 
iiicluded in 
" The Canter- 
bui-y Tales." 



Chaucer a 
master poet. 



pas," who goes seeking an elf queen for his mate, and 
is encountered by the giant Sir Olifaunt, burlesques 
these same romances with their impossible adventures 
and thelr tedious rambling descriptions. The tales of 
the prioress and the second nun are saints' legends. 
"The Monkes Tale" is a set of dry, moral apologues in 
the manner of his contemporary, the "moral Gower." 
The stories told by the reeve, miller, friar, sompnour, 
shipman, and merchant belong to the class of fabliaux, 
a few of which existed in English, such as "Dame 
Siriz," " The Lay of the Ash," and "The Land of 
Cokaygne," already mentioned. "The Nonne Preestes 
Tale," likewise, which Dryden modernized with ad- 
mirable humor, was of the class of fabliaux, and was 
suggested by a little poem of forty lines, " Dou Coc et 
dou Werpil," by Marie de France, a Norman poetess 
of the thirteenth century. It belonged, like the early 
English poem of "The Fox and the Wolf," to the 
popular animal saga of " Reynard the Fox." "The 
Frankeleynes Tale," whose scene is Brittany, and "The 
Wyf of Bathes Tale," which is laid in the time of the 
British Arthur, belong to the class of French lais, 
serious metrical tales shorter than the romance and of 
Bretón origin, the best representatives of which are the 
elegant and graceful lais of Marie de France. 

Chaucer was our first great master of laughter and of 
tears. His serious poetry is fuU of the tenderest pathos. 
His loosest tales are delightfully humorous and life-like. 
He is the kindliest of satirists. The knavery, greed, 
and hypocrisy of the begging friars and the sellers of 
indulgences are exposed by him as pitilessly as by 
Langland and Wiclif, though his mood is not, like 
theirs, one of stern, moral indignation, but rather the 
good-natured scorn of a man of the world. His charity 



From tlie Conque st to Chaucer. 33 

is broad enough to cover even the corrupt sompnour, 
of whom he says, 

And yet ¡n sooth he was a good felawe. 

Whether he shared Widif's opinions is unknown, but 

Tohn of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and father of Hisaiieged 

•* _ Lollardry. 

Henry IV., who was Chaucer' s life-long patrón, was 
likewise Widif's great upholder against the persecution 
of the bishops. It is, perhaps, not without significance 
that the poor parson in "The Canterbury Tales," the 
only one of his ecdesiastical pilgrims whom Chaucer 
treats with respect, is suspected by the host of the 
Tabard to be a "loller," that is, a Lollard, or disciple 
of Wichf, and that, because he objects to the jovial 
inn-keeper's swearing " by Goddes bones." 

Chaucer' s English is nearly as easy for a modern 
reader as Shakspere's, and few of his words have be- Hismodem- 
come obsolete. His verse, when rightly read, is correct 
and melodious. The early English was, in some re- 
spects, "more sweet upon the tongue" than the modern 
language. The vowels had their broad Italian sounds, 
and the speech was fuU of soft gutturals and vocalic syl- 
lables, like the endings en, es^ e, which made feminine 
rhymes and kept the consonants from coming harshly 
together. 

Great poet as Chaucer was, he was not quite free 
from the literary weakness of his time. He relapses Hisaniess- 
sometimes into the babbling style of the oíd chroniclers 
and legend writers ; cites ' ' auctours ' ' and gives long 
catalogues of ñames and objects with a naive display of 
learning ; and introduces vulgar details in his most 
exquisite passages. There is something childish about 
almost all the thought and art of the Middle Ages— at 
least Gutside of Italy, where classical models and 



34 



From Chaucer to TeJtnyson. 



Persistence of 
French in 
England. 



John Gower. 



traditions never quite lost their hold. But Chaucer' s 
artlessness is half the secret of his wonderful ease in 
story-telling, and is so engaging that, like a child's 
sweet unconsciousness, one would not wish it othervvise. 
' ' The Canterbury Tales ' ' had shown of what high 
uses the English language was capable, but the curi- 
ously trihngual condition of literature still continued, 
French was spoken in the proceedings of ParHament as 
late as the reign of Henry VI. (1422-1471). Chaucer's 
contemporary, John Gower, wrote his " Vox Clamantis " 
in Latin, his " Speculum Meditantis" (a lost poem) 
and a number of ballades in Parisian French, and his 
"Confessio Amantis" (1393) in English. The last 
named is a very uninspired work, in some fifteen thou- 
sand smooth, monotonous, eight-syllabled couplets, in 
which the lover is shriven by Genius, the Priest of 
Nature, who discourses on the five senses and the seven 
deadly sins, and tells a string of stories taken from 
Ovid, the "Gesta Romanorum," and other sources. 



1. Bernhard ten Brink : " Early English Litera- 
ture." Translated from the Germán by H. M. Ken- 
nedy. New York : 1883. 

2. Morris and Skeat : " Specimens of Early Eng- 
lish." (Clarendon Press Series. ) Oxford. 

3. "The Vision of William Concerning Piers the 
Plowman." Edited by W. W. Skeat. Oxford : 1886. 

4. Chaucer : ' ' The Prologue " ; " The Knightes 
Tale" ; "The Nonne Preestes Tale." Edited by A. 
Morris. Oxford : 1867. 

5. "The Student's Chaucer." Edited by Rev. W. 
W. Skeat. New York : 1895. 



Chaucer. 



CHAPTER II. 
From Chaucer to Spenser, 1400-1599. 

The fifteenth century was a barren period in English 
literary history. It was nearly two hundred years after .^.^^^ schooi of 
Chaucer' s death before any poet carne whose ñame can 
be written in the same line with his. He was followed 
at once by a number of imitators who caught the trick 
of his language and verse, but lacked the genius to 
make any fine use of them. The manner of a true poet 
may be learned, but his style, in the high sense of the 
word, remains his own secret. Some of the poems 
which have been attributed to Chaucer and printed in 
editions of his works, as "The Court of Love," "The 
Flower and the Leaf," " The Cuckow and the Nightin- 
gale," are now regarded by many scholars as the work 
of later writers. If not Chaucer' s, they are of Chaucer' s 
school, and the first two, at least, are very pretty poems 
after the fashion of his minor pieces, such as ' ' The Boke 
of the Duchesse" and " The Parlament of Foules." 

Among his professed disciples was Thomas Occleve, 
a duU rhymer, who, in his " Governail of Princes," a 
didactic poem translated from the Latin about 141 "5, " Governail of 

111 , • í , • Princes." 

drew, or caused to be drawn, on the margm 01 his 
manuscript, a colored portrait of his ' ' maister dere and 
fader reverent," 

This londés verray tresour and richesse. 
Dethe by thy dethe hath harm irreparable 
Unto US done ; hir vengeable duresse 
Dispoiléd hath this londe of the swetnésse 
Of rhetoryk. 



Occleve's 



36 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



John Lydgate. 



James I. of 
Scotland. 



" The Kinges 
Quhair." 



Another versifier of this same generation was John 
Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Bury St. 
Edmunds, in Suffolk, a very prolix writer, who com- 
posed, among other things, "The Story of Thebes," 
as an addition to "The Canterbury Tales." His 
bailad of " London Lyckpenny," recounting the ad- 
ventures of a countryman who goes to the law courts at 
Westminster in search of justice 

But for lack of mony I could not spede — 

is of interest for the glimpse that it gives us of London 
Street life. 

Chaucer' s influence wrought more fruitfully in Scot- 
land, whither it was carried by James L, who had been 
captured by the English when a boy of eleven, and 
brought up at Windsor as a prisoner of state. There 
he wrote during the reign of Henry V. (1413-1422) a 
poem in six cantos, entitled "The Kinges Quhair" 
(King's Book), in Chaucer' s seven-lined stanza, which 
had been employed by Lydgate in his ' ' Falls of 
Princes" (from Boccaccio), and which was afterward 
called the " rime royal," from its use by King James. 
"The Kinges Quhair" tells how the poet on a May 
morning looks from the window of his prison chamber 
into the castle garden full of alleys, hawthorn hedges, 
and fair arbors set with 

The sharpé, greené, svveeté juniper. 

He was listening to "the little sweeté nightingale," 
when suddenly casting down his eyes he saw a lady 
walking in the garden, and at once his " heart became 
her thrall." The incident is precisely like Palamon's 
first sight of Emily in Chaucer' s " Knightes Tale," 
and almost in the very words of Palamon the poet 
addresses his lady : 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 37 

Ah, sweet, are ye a worldly créatúre 

Or heavenly thing in likeness of natúre ? 

Or are ye very Nature, the goddéss, 

That have depainted with your heavenly hand 

This garden full of flowrés as they stand ? 

Then, after a visión in the taste of the age, in which 
the royal prisoner is transported in turn to the courts of 
Venus, Minerva, and Fortune, and receives their in- 
struction in the duties belonging to Love's service, he 
wakes from sleep and a vvhite turtle-dove brings to his 
window a spray of red giUiflovvers, whose leaves are 
inscribed, in golden letters, with a message of encour- 
agement. 

James I. may be reckoned among the EngHsh poets. 
He mentions Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate as his mas- 
ters. His education was EngHsh, and so was the dialect a royai poet. 
of his poem, although the unique manuscript of it is in 
the Scotch spelling. ' ' The Kinges Quhair ' ' is some- 
what overladen with ornament and with the fashionable 
allegorical devices, but it is, upon the whole, a rich and 
tender love song, the best specimen of court poetry 
between the time of Chaucer and the time of Spenser. 
The lady who walked in the garden on that May morn- 
ing was Jane Beaufort, niece to Henry IV. She was 
married to her poet after his reléase from captivity and 
became queen of Scotland in 1424. Twelve years later 
James was murdered by Sir Robert Grahaní and his 
Highlanders, and his wife, who strove to defend him, 
was wounded by the assassins. The story of the mur- 
der has been told by D. G. Rossetti in his bailad, "The 
King's Tragedy." The whole life of this princely 
singer was, like his poem, in the very spirit of romance. 

The eñect of all this imitation of Chaucer was to fix a 
standard of literary style and to confirm the authority of 



38 



From Chaucer to Te7inyso7i. 



Maintenance 
of a literary 
standard. 



Slow develop- 
metit of Eiig- 
lisli prose. 



the East-Midland English in which he had written. 
Though the poets of the fifteenth century were not 
overburdened with genius, they had, at least, a definite 
model to follow. As in the fourteenth century, metrical 
romances continued to be translated from the French, 
homUies and saints' legends and rhyming chronicles 
were still manufactured. But the poems of Occleve and 
Lydgate and James I. had helped to polish and refina 
the tongue and to prolong the Chaucerian tradition. 
The hterary English never again slipped back into the 
chaos of dialects which had prevailed before Chaucer. 

In the history of every Hterature the development of 
prose is later than that of verse. The latter being, by 
its very form, artificial, is cultivated as a fine art, and its 
records preserved in an early state of society, when 
prose is simply the talk of men, and not thought worthy 
of being written and kept. English prose labored under 
the added disadvantage of competing with Latin, which 
was the cosmopolitan tongue and the médium of com- 
munication between scholars of all countries. Latin was 
the language of the church, and in the Middle Ages 
churchman and scholar were convertible terms. The 
word clerk meant either priest or scholar. Two of the 
' ' Canterbury Tales ' ' are in prose, as is also ' ' The Tes- 
tamentof Love," formerly ascribed to Chaucer, and the 
style of all these is so feeble, wandering, and unformed 
that it is hard to believe that they were written by the 
same man who wrote "The Knightes Tale" and the 
story of Griselda. ' ' The Voiage and Travaile of Sir 
John Maundeville" — the forerunner of that great library 
of oriental travel which has enriched our modern litera- 
ture — was written, according to its author, first in Latin, 
then in French, and, lastly, in the year 1356, translated 
into English for the behoof of "lordes and knyghtes and 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 39 

othere noble and worthi men, that conne' not Latyn but 

litylle." The author professed to have spent over j'^f^véis ^^'"^^ 

thirty years in eastern travel, to have penetrated as far 

as Farther India and the " iles that ben abouten Indi," 

to have been in the service of the sultán of Babylon in 

his wars against the Bedouins, and, at another time, in 

the employ of the Great Khan of Tartary. But there is 

no copy of the Latin versión of his travels extant ; the 

French seems to be much later than 1356, and the 

English manuscript to belong to the early years of the 

fifteenth century, and to have been made by another 

hand. Recent investigations make it probable that 

Maundeville borrowed his descriptions of the remoter 

East from many sources, and particularly from the nar- 

rative of Odoric, a Minorite friar of Lombardy, who 

wrote about 1330. Some doubt is even cast upon the 

existence of any such person as Maundeville. Whoever 

wrote the book that passes under his ñame, however, 

would seem to have visited the Holy Land, and the part 

of the " voiage" that describes Palestine and the Levant 

is fairly cióse to the truth. The rest of the work, so far 

as it is not taken from the tales of other travelers, is a 

diverting tissue of fables about "gryfouns" that fly away 

with yokes of oxen, tribes of one-legged Ethiopians who 

shelter themselves from the sun by using their mon- 

strous feet as umbrellas, etc. 

During the fifteenth century English prose was grad- 
ually being brought into a shape fitting it for more 
serious uses. In the controversy between the church 
and the Lollards Latin was still mainly employed, but 
Wiclif had written some of his tracts in English, and, in 
1449, Reginald Peacock, Bishop of St. Asaph, contrib- 
uted, in English, to the same controversy, "The Re- m Represo," 

1 Know. 



40 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Sir John 
Fortescue. 



Decay of 
medieval 
society. 



Iiitroduction of 
printing. 



pressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy. ' ' Sir John 
Fortescue, who was chief justice of the King's Bench 
from 1442-60, wrote during the reign of Edvvard IV. a 
book on ' ' The Difference Between Absolute and Lim- 
ited Monarchy," which may be regarded as the first 
treatise on political philosophy and constitutional law 
in the language. But these works hardly belong to puré 
hterature, and are remarkable only as early, though not 
very good, examples of Enghsh prose in a barren time. 

The fifteenth century was an era of decay and change. 
The Middle Age was dying, church and state were 
slowly disintegrating under the new intellectual influ- 
ences that were working secretly under ground. In 
England the civil wars of the Red and White Roses 
were breaking up the oíd feudal society by decimating 
and impoverishing the baronage, thus preparing the way 
for the centralized monarchy of the Tudors. Toward 
the cióse of that century, and early in the next, hap- 
pened the four great events, or series of events, which 
freed and widened men's minds, and, in a succession of 
shocks, overthrew the medieval system of life and 
thought. These were the invention of printing, the 
Renaissance, or revival of classical learning, the discov- 
ery of America, and the Protestant Reformation. 

William Caxton, the first English printer, learned the 
art in Cologne. In 1476 he set up his press in a house 
called "the Red Pole," in the Almonry at Westmin- 
ster. Just before the introduction of printing the de- 
mand for manuscript copies had grown very active, 
stimulated, perhaps, by the coming into general use of 
linen paper instead of the more costly parchment. The 
scriptoria of the monasteries were the places where the 
transcribing and illuminating of manuscripts went on, 
professional copyists resorting to Westminster Abbey, 



Caxton's press. 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 41 

for example, to make their copies of books belonging to 
the monastic library. Caxton's choice of a spot was, 
therefore, significant. His new art for multiplying 
copies began to supersede the oíd method of transcrip- 
tion at the very headquarters of the manuscript makers. 
The first book that bears his Westminster imprint was 
"The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," trans- 
lated from the French by Anthony Woodville, Lord 
Rivers, a brother-in-law of Edward IV. The hst of 
books printed by Caxton is interesting, as showing the issues of 
taste of the time, since he naturally selected what was 
most in demand. The list shows that manuals of devo- 
tion and chivalry were still in chief request, books Hke 
"The Order of Chivahy," " Faits of Arms," and "The 
Golden Legend," which last Caxton translated himself, 
as well as ' ' Reynard the Fox, ' ' and a French versión 
of the ^neid. He also printed, with continuations of 
his own, revisions of several early chronicles and editions 
of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. A translation of 
"Cicero on Friendship," made directly from the Latin, 
by Thomas Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, was printed by 
Caxton, but no edition of a classical author in the 
original. The new learning of the Renaissance had 
not, as yet, taken much hold in England. 

Upon the whole, the productions of Caxton's press 
were mostly of a kind that may be described as medi- 
eval, and the most important of them, if we except his 
edition of Chaucer, was that " noble and joyous book," 
as Caxton called it, "Le Morte Dartur," written by Maiory's 
Sir Thomas Malory in 1469 and printed by Caxton in oartun" 
1485. This was a compilation from French Arthur 
romances, and was by far the best English prose that 
had yet been written. It may be doubted, indeed, 
whether, for purposes of simple story-telling, the pie- 



42 



Froni Chancer to Tennyson. 



Excellence of 
its iiarrative 
stvle. 



Lord Bemers's 
traiislatioii of 
Froissart. 



turesque charm of Malory's style has been improved 
upon. The episode which lends its ñame to the whole 
romance, the death of Arthur, is most impressively 
told, and Tennyson has followed Malory's narrative 
closely, even to such details of the scene as the Httle 
chapel by the sea, the moonUght, and the answer which 
Sir Bedwere made the wounded king, when bidden to 
throw ExcaHbur into the water, " ' What saw thou 
there?' said the king. *Sir,' he said, 'I saw nothing 
but the waters wap and the waves wan.' " 

I heard the ripple washing in the reeds 
And the wild water lapping on the crag. 

And very touching and beautiful is the oft-quoted 
lament of Sir Ector over Launcelot, in Malory's final 
chapter : 

" Ah, Launcelot," he said, " thou were head of all Christian 
knights ; and novv I daré say," said Sir Ector, "thou Sir 
Launcelot, there thou Hest, that thou were never matched of 
earthly knight's hand ; and thou were the courtliest knight that 
ever bare shield ; and thou were the truest friend to thy lover 
that ever bestrode horse ; and thou were the truest lover of a 
sinful man that ever loved woman ; and thou were the kindest 
man that ever struck with sword ; and thou were the goodliest 
person that ever carne among press of kniglits ; and thou 
were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall 
among ladies ; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal 
foe that ever put spear in the rest." 

Equally good, as an example of English prose narra- 
tive, was the translation made by John Bourchier, Lord 
Berners, of that most brilliant of the French chroniclers, 
Chaucer's contemporary, Sir John Froissart. Lord 
Berners was the English governor of Calais, and his 
versión of Froissart's "Chronicles" was made in 1523- 
25, at the request of Henry VIH. In these tvvo books 
English chivalry spoke its last genuine word. In Sir 



From Chaticer to Spenser. 43 

Philip Sidney the character of the knight was merged 

into that of the modern gentleman. And although í^^r^ance^o/**^ 

tournaments were still held in the reign of Ehzabeth, chivairy. 

and Spenser cast his ' ' Faerie Queene ' ' into the form of 

a chivahy romance, these were but a ceremonial sur- 

vival and literary tradition from an order of things that 

had passed away. How antagonistic the new classical 

culture was to the vanished ideal of the Middle Age 

may be read in " Toxophilus," a treatise on archery 

published in 1545, by Roger Ascham, a Greek lecturer 

in Cambridge, and the tutor of the Princess Elizabeth 

and of Lady Jane Grey : 



In our forefathers' time, when papistry as a standing pool 



Ascham on 



covered and overflovved all England, fevv books were read in the " Morte 
our tongue saving certain books of chivalry, as they said, for ^'■'"'■• 
pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in 
monasteries by idle monks or wanton canons : as one, for 
example, " INIorte Arthure," the whole pleasure of which 
book standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter 
and bold ba\vdr3^ This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at 
or honest men to take pleasure at. Yet I know when God's 
Bible was banished the court, and "Morte Arthure" received 
into the prince's chamber. 

The fashionable school of courtly allegory, first intro- 
duced into England by the translation of "The Romaunt " Passetyme of 

. . Pleasure." 

of the Rose," reached its extremity in Stephen Hawes's 
"Passetyme of Pleasure," printed by Caxton's suc- 
cessor, Wynkyn de Worde, in 15 17. This was a 
dreary and pedantic poem, in which it is told how 
Graunde Amoure, after a long series of adventures and 
instructions among such shadowy personages as Verite, 
Observaunce, Falshed, and Good Operación, finally 
won the love of La Belle Pucel. Hawes was the last 
English poet of note whose culture was exclusively 
medieval. His contemporary, John Skelton, mingled 



44 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



the oíd fashions wlth the new classical learning. In his 
" Bowge of Courte" (Court Entertainment or Dole), 
and in others of his earlier pieces, he used, like Hawes, 
Chaucer's seven-lined stanza. But his later poems 
were mostly written in a verse of his own invention, 
called after him ' ' Skeltonical. ' ' This was a sort of 
glorified doggerel, in short, swift, ragged lines, with 
occasional intermixture of French and Latin. 



Skeltonical 
verse- 



Skelton's 
satires and 
occasional 
poems. 



Her beautye to augment, 

Dame Nature hath her lent 

A warte upen her cheke. 

Who so lyst to seke 

In her vyságe a skar 

That semyth from afar 

Lyke to the radiant star, 

All with favour fret, 

So properly it is set. 

She is the vyolet, 

The daysy delectáble, 

The cohimbine commendáble, 

The jelofer' amyáble ; 

For this most goodly floure, 

This blossom of fressh coloúr, 

So Júpiter me succoúr, 

She flourysheth new and new 

In beaute and vertéw ; 

Hac claritate gemina, 

O gloriosa femina, etc. 

Skelton was a rude railing rhymer, a singular mixture 
of a true and original poet with a buñoon ; coarse as 
Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. 
He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane 
and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his 
clerical character. His " Tunnyng of Elynoure Rum- 
myng" is a study of very low Ufe, reminding one 

1 Gilliflower. 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 45 

slightly of Burns's "JoUy Beggars." His " Phyllyp 
Sparrowe " is a sportive, pretty, fantastic elegy on the 
death of a pet bird belonging to Mistress Joanna 
Scroupe, of Carowe, and has been compared to the 
Latin poet Catullus's elegy on Lesbia' s sparrow. 
In " Speke, Parrot," and "Why Come Ye not to 
Courte?" he assailed the powerful Cardinal Wolsey 
with the most ferocious satire, and was, in conse- 
quence, obliged to take sanctuary at Westminster, 
where he died in 1529. Skelton was a classical scholar, 
and at one time tutor to Henry VIII. The great 
humanist, Erasmus, spoke of him as the "one light 
.and ornament of British letters. " Caxton asserts that 
he had read Vergil, Ovid, and Tully, and quaintly 
adds, " I suppose he hath dronken of Elycon's well." 

In refreshing contrast with the artificial court poetry 
of the fiíteenth and first three quarters of the sixteenth 
century, was the folk poetrv, the popular bailad litera- The popular 

, . , , , , , , , ,• • ^1 ballads. 

ture which was handed down by oral tradition. I he 
English and Scotch ballads were narrative songs, written 
SsJn a variety of meters, but chiefly in what is known as 
the bailad stanza. 

In somer, when the shawes ^ be shene," 

And leves be large and longe, 
Hit is full merry in feyre forést, 

To here the foulys song. 

To se the dere draw to the dale, 

And leve the hillés hee,^ 
And shadow them in the leves grene, 

Under the grene-wode tree. 

It is not possible to assign a definite date to these Their author- 
ballads. They lived on the lips of the people, and InUquUy. 
were seldom reduced to writing till many years after 

1 Woods. 2 Bright. s High. 



46 



From Chaucer to Tennyso7i. 



" Chevy 
Chase." 



Scotch border 
ballads. 



they were first composed and sung. Meanwhile they 
underwent repeated changes, so that we have numerous 
versions of the same story. They belonged to no 
particular author, but, like all folk-lore, were handled 
freely by the unknovvn poets, minstrels, and bailad 
reciters, who modernized their language, added to 
them, or corrupted them, and passed them along. 
Corning out of an uncertain past, based on some dark 
legend of heart-break or bloodshed, they bear no poet's 
ñame, but are /eres naturce, and have the flavor of wild 
game. In the form in which they are preserved, few of 
them are older than the seventeenth or the latter part of 
the sixteenth century, though many, in their original 
shape, are doubtless much older. A very few of the 
Robin Hood ballads go back to the fifteenth century, 
and to the same period is assigned the charming bailad 
of ' ' The Nut Brown Maid ' ' and the famous border 
bailad of "Chevy Chase," which describes a battle 
between the retainers of the two great houses of Douglas 
and Percy. It was this song of which Sir Philip 
Sidney wrote, ' ' I never heard the oíd song of Percy 
and Douglas but I found myself more moved than by a 
trumpet ; and yet it is sung but by some blind crouder, ' 
with no rougher voice than rude style." But the style 
of the ballads was not always rude. In their com- 
pressed energy of expression, in the impassioned way 
in which they tell their tale of grief and horror, there 
reside often a tragic power and art superior to anything 
in English poetry between Chaucer and Spenser ; 
superior to anything in Chaucer and Spenser them- 
selves, in the quality of intensity. 

The true home of the bailad literature was ' ' the 
north country," and especially the Scotch border, 

1 Fiddler. 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 47 

where the constant forays of moss-troopers and the 
raids and prívate warfare of the lords of the marches 
supplied many traditions of heroism, like those cele- 
brated in the oíd poem of "The Battle of Otterbourne," 
and in "The Hunting of the Cheviot," or " Chevy 
Chase," already mentioned, Some of these are Scotch 
and others EngUsh ; the dialect of Lowland Scotland 
did not, in eñect, diñer much from that of Northumber- 
land and Yorkshire, both descended aUke from the oíd 
Northumbrian of Anglo-Saxon times. Other ballads 
were shortened, popular versions of the chivalry ro- 
mances, which were passing out of fashion among edu- 
cated readers in the sixteenth century and now fell into 
the hands of the ballad-makers. Others preserved the 
memory of local country-side tales, family feuds, and 
tragic incidents, partly historical and partly legendary, Foik-iore. 
associated often with particular spots. Such are, for 
example, "The Dovvie Dens of Yarrow," " Fair Helen 
of Kirkconnell," "The Forsaken Bride," and "The 
Tvva Corbies." Others, again, have a coloring of 
popular superstition, like the beautiful bailad concern- 
ing " Thomas of Ersyldoune," who goes in at Eildon 
Hill with an elf queen and «pends seven years in fairy- 
land. 

But the most popular of all the ballads were those 
which cluster about the ñame of that good outlaw, 
Robin Hood, who, with his merry men, hunted the baíÍds"°°'^ 
forest of Shervvood, where he killed the king's deer and 
waylaid rich travelers, but was kind to poor knights 
and honest workmen. Robin Hood is the true bailad 
hero, the darling of the common people as Arthur was 
of the nobles. The ñames of his confessor, Friar Tuck ; 
his mistress, Maid Marian ; his companions, Little 
John, Scathelock, and Much, the miller's son, were as 



48 



From Chaticer to Tennyson, 



Not historical. 



Their English 
spirit. 



familiar as household words. Langland in the four- 
teenth century mentions " rimes of Robin Hood," and 
eñorts have been made to identify him with some actual 
personage, as with one of the dispossessed barons who 
had been adherents of Simón de Montfort in his war 
against Henry III. But there seems to be nothing 
historical about Robin Hood. He was a creation of 
the popular fancy. The game laws under the Norman 
kings were very oppressive, and there were, doubtless, 
dim memories still cherished among the Saxon masses 
of Herevvard and Edric the Wild, who had defied the 
power of the Conqueror, as well as of later freebooters, 
who had takcn to the woods and lived by plunder. 
Robin Hood was a thoroughly national character. He 
had the English love of fair play, the English readiness 
to shake hands and make up, and keep no malice when 
worsted in a square fight. He beat and plundered the 
fat bishops and abbots, who had more than their share 
of wealth, but he was generous and hospitable to the 
distrcssed, and lived a free and careless life in the good 
greon wood. He was a migiity archer with those 
national weapons, the longbow and the cloth-yard shaft. 
He tricked and baífled legal authority in the person of 
the proud sheriñ of Nottingham, thereby appealing to 
that secret sympathy with lawless adventure which 
niarked the free-born, vigorous yeomanry of England. 
And, finally, the scenery of the forest gives a poetic 
background and a never-failing charm to the exploits 
of "the oíd Robin Hood of England" and his merry 
nien. 

The ballads came, in time, to have certain tricks of 
style, such as are apt to characterize a body of anony- 
nious folk-poetry. Such is their use of conventional 
epithets : "the red, red gold," "the good green 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 49 

wood," " the gray goose wing. " Such are certain 
recurring turas of phrase like, styiistic 

^ ^ peculiarities of 

Rut out and spak their stepmother. ^ ^ ^°^ ^^ ' 

Such is, finally, a kind of sing-song repetition, which 
doubtless helped the bailad singer to memorize his 
stock, as, for example, 



She had'na pu'd a double rose, 
A rose but onlv tvvae. 



Or again, 



And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass, 

And mony ane sings o' corn ; 
And mony ane sings o' Robin Hood, 

Kens little whare he was bom. 

It was na in the ha', the ha', 

Ñor in the painted bower ; 
But it was in the gude green wood, 

Amang the Hly flower. 

Copies of some of these oíd ballads were havvked 
about in the sixteenth century, printed in black letter 
"broadsides," or single sheets. Wynkyn de Worde coiiections. 
printed in 1489 "A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood," 
which is a sort of digest of earlier ballads on the sub- 
ject. In the seventeenth century a few of the English 
popular ballads were collected in miscellanies called 
"Garlands." Early in the eighteenth century the 
Scotch poet, Alian Ramsay, published a number of 
Scotch ballads in ' ' The Evergreen ' ' and ' ' Tea-Table 
Miscellany." But no large and important coUection 
was put forth until Percy's " Reliques" (1765), a book pg^cv's 
which hada pow^erful influence upon Wordsworth and "Renques." 
Walter Scott. In Scotland some excellent ballads in 
the ancient manner were written in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, such as Jane Elliott's " Lament for Flodden " 
and the fine bailad of ' ' Sir Patrick Spence. ' ' Walter 



50 From Chaticer to Teyínyson. 

Scott's " Proud Maisie is in the Wood" is a perfect 
reproduction of the pregnant, indirect method of the 
oíd ballad-makers. 

In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and 
many Greek scholars, with their manuscripts, fled into 
Italy, vvhere they began teaching their language and 
literature, and especially the philosophy of Plato. There 
had been little or no knovvledge of Greek in Western 
Europa during the Middle Ages, and only a very 
imperfect knowledge of the Latin classics. Ovid and 
Statius were widely read, and so was the late Latin 
poet, Boethius, whose " De Consolatione Philosophiae " 
had been translated into English by King Alfred and 
by Chaucer. Little was known of Vergil at first liand, 
and he was popularly supposed to have been a mighty 
wizard who made sundry works of enchantment at 
Rome, such as a magic mirror and statue. Caxton's 
so-called translation of the ^neid was in reality noth- 
ing but a versión of a French romance based on Vergil' s 
epic. Of the Román historians, orators, and moralists, 
such as Livy, Tacitus, Caesar, Cicero, and Séneca, 
there was almost entire ignorance, as also of poets 
like Horace, Lucretius, Juvenal, and Catullus. The 
gradual rediscovery of the remains of ancient art and 
literature which took place in the fifteenth century, and 
largely in Italy, worked an immense revolution in the 
mind of Europe. Manuscripts were brought out of 
their hiding places, edited by scholars, and spread 
abroad by means of the printing-press. Statues were 
dug up and placed in museums, and men became 
acquainted with a civilization far more mature than that 
of the Middle Age, and with models of perfect work- 
manship in letters and the fine arts. 

In the latter years of the fifteenth century a number 



Froví Chaucer to Spenser. 51 

of Englishmen learned Greek in Italy and brought it 

back with them to England. William Grocyn and ^h^oi^rshi ¡n 

Thomas Linacre, who had studied at Florence under Engiand. 

the refugee Demetrius Chalcondylas, began teaching 

Greek at Oxford, the former as early as 1491. A little 

later John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's and the founder of 

St. Paul's School, and his friend WiUiam Lily, the 

grammarian, and first master of St. Paul's (1500), also 

studied Greek abroad ; Colet in Italy, and Lily at 

Rhodes and in the city of Rome. Thomas More, after- 

ward the famous chancellor of Henry VIII., was among 

the pupils of Grocyn and Linacre at Oxford. Thither 

also, in 1497, carne, in search of the new knowledge, 

the Dutchman, Erasmus, who became the foremost Erasmus. 

scholar of his time. From Oxford the study spread to 

the sister university, where the first English Grecian of 

his day, Sir John Cheke, who " taught Cambridge and sirjohncueke. 

King Edward Greek," became the incumbent of the 

new professorship founded about 1540. Among his 

pupils was Roger Ascham, already mentioned, in whose 

time St. John's CoUege, Cambridge, was the chief seat 

of the new learning^ of which Thomas Nash testifies 

that it ' ' was an universitie within itself ; having more 

candles light in it, every winter morning before four of 

the clock, than the four of clock bell gave strokes. " 

Greek was not introduced at the universities without 
violent opposition from the conservative element, who 
were nicknamed Trojans. The opposition came in part 
from the priests, who feared that the new study would 
sow seeds of heresy. Yet many of the most devout humanists. 
churchmen were friends of a more liberal culture, 

, _,,,.. Sir Thomas 

among them Ihomas More, whose Catholicism was More, 
undoubted and who went to the block for his religión. 
Cardinal Wolsey, whom More succeeded as chancellor, 



52 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



was also a munificent patrón of learning, and founded 
Christ Church CoUege at Oxford. Popular education 
at once felt the impulse of the nevv studies, and over 
twenty endowed grammar schools were established in 
England in the first twenty years of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. Greek became a passion even with English 
ladies. Ascham in his " Schoolmaster," a treatise on 
education, published in 1570, says that Queen Eliza- 
beth ' ' readeth here now at Windsor more Greek every 
day than some prebendarie of this Church doth read 
Latin in a whole week." And in the same book he 
tells hovv, calling once on Lady Jane Grey, at Brode- 
gate, in Leicestershire, he ' ' found her in her chamber 
reading 'Phcedon Platonis' in Greek, and that with as 
much delite as some gentleman would read a merry tale 
in ' Bocase,' " and when he asked her why she had not 
gone hunting with the rest, she answered, ' ' I wisse, ' all 
their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure 
that I find in Plato." Ascham' s "Schoolmaster," as well 
as his earlier book, " Toxophilus," a Platonic dialogue 
on archery, bristles with quotations from the Greek and 
Latin classics, and with that perpetual reference to the 
authority of antiquity on every topic that he touches 
which remained the fashion in all serious prose down to- 
the time of Dryden. 

One speedy result of the new learning was fresh 
translations of the Scriptures in English out of the 
original tongues. In 1525 William Tyndale printed at 
Cologne and Worms his versión of the New Testament 
from the Greek. Ten years later Miles Coverdale 
made, at Zurich, a translation of the whole Bible from 
the Germán and Latin. These were the basis of 
numerous later translations, and the strong, beautifuL 

1 Surely ; a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon gnvis. 



Frojn Chaiicer to Spenser. 53 

English of Tyndale's Testament is preserved for the 

most part iii our Authorized Versión (161 1). At first 1^1^^^°^^'^' 

it was not safe to make or distribute these early transla- 

tions in England. Numbers of copies were brought 

into the country, however, and did much to promote 

the cause of the Reformation. After Henry VIII. had 

broken with the pope the new EngUsh Bible circulated 

freely among the people. Tyndale and Sir Thomas 

More carried on a vigorous controversy in English upon 

some of the questions at issue between the church and 

the Protestants. Other important contributions to the 

literature of the Reformation were the homely sermons 

preached at Westminster and at Paul's Cross by Bishop 

Hugh Latimer, who was burned at Oxford in the reign 

of Bloody Mary. The Enghsh Book of Common 

Prayer was compiled in 1549-52. 

More was, perhaps, the best representative of a group 
of scholars who wished to enlighten and reform the Liberal 
church from the inside, but who refused to foUow Cathoiicism. 
Henry VIII. in his breach with Rome, Dean Colet 
and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, belonged to the 
same company, and 'Fisher was beheaded in the same 
year (1535) with More, and for the same oííense, 
namely, refusing to take the oath to maintain the act 
confirming the king's divorce from Catharine of Arra- 
gon and his marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's phi- 
losophy is best reflected in his "Utopia," the descrip- .'^utopia" 
tion of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato' s 
"Republic" and printed in 1516. The ñame signifies 
"no place" (ou ró-09), and has furnished an adjective 
to the language. The "Utopia" was in Latin, but 
More's " History of Edward V. and Richard III.," 
written 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in Eng- 
lish. It is the first example in the tongue of a history 



54 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

as distinguishcd from a chronicle ; that is, it ¡s a 
reasoned and artistic presentation of an historie period, 
and not a mere clironological narrative of events. 

The first three quarters of the sixteenth century pro- 
duced no great original work of literature in England. 
It was a season of preparation, of education. The 
storms of the Reformation interrupted and delayed the 
literary renascence through the reigns of Henry VIII., 
Edward VI., and Queen Mary. When EHzabeth carne 
to the throne, in 1558, a more settled order of things 
began, and a period of great national prosperity and 
glory. Meanwhile the English mind had been slowly 
assimilating the new classical culture, which was ex- 
tended to all classes of readers by the numerous transla- 
tions of Greck and Latin authors. A fresh poetic im- 
pulse carne from Italy. In 1557 appeared "Tottel's 
Miscellany," containing songs and sonnets by a "new 
company of courtly makcrs." Most of the pieces in 
the volume had been writtcn years before by gentlemen 
of Henry VIII. 's court, and circuKited in manuscript. 
The two chief contributors were Sir Thomas Wyat, at 
one time English ambassador to Spain, and that 
brilliant noble, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who 
was beheaded in 1547 for quartering the king's arms 
with his own. Both of them were dead long before 
their work was printed. 

The verses in "Tottel's Miscellany" show very 
clearly the influence of Italian poetry. We have seen 
that Chaucer took subjects and something more from 
Boccaccio and Petrarch. But the sonnet, which Pe- 
trarch had brought to perfection, was first introduced 
into England by Wyat. There was a great revi\-al of 
sonnctccring in Italy in the sixteenth century, and a 
number of Wyat's poems were adaptations of the 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 55 

sonnets and canzoni of Petrarch and later poets. Others 
were imitations of Horace's satires and epistles. Surrey 
introduced the Italian blank verse into English \\\ his 
translation of tvvo books of the ^neid. The love 
poetry of "Tottel's Miscellany" is polished and 
artificial, like the models which it followed. Dante' s 
Beatrice was a child, and so was Petrarch' s Laura. 
Followinof their example, Surrey addressed his love The 

° . . . sonneteers. 

complaints, by way of compliment, to a little girl of 
the noble Irish faniily of Geraldine. The amorists, or 
love sonneteers, dwelt on the metaphysics of the passion 
with a tedious minuteness, and the conventional nature 
of their sighs and complaints may often be guessed by 
an experienced reader from the titles of their poems : 
' ' Description of the restless state of a lover, with suit 
to his lady to rué on his dying heart"; " Hell tor- 
menteth not the damned ghosts so sore as unkindness 
the lover"; "The lover prayeth not to be disdained, 
refused, mistrusted, ñor forsaken," etc. The most 
genuine utterance of Surrey was his poem written while 
imprisoned in Windsor — a cage where so many a song- 
bird has grown vocal. And Wyat's little piece of eight 
Unes, " Of His Return from Spain," is worth reams of 
his amatory affectations. 

Nevertheless the writers in "Tottel's Miscellany" 
were real reformers of English poetry. They intro- 
duced new models of style and new metrical forms, and The"new 
they broke away from the medie\'al traditions which wyafand 
had hitherto obtained. The language had undergone ""^^' 
some changes since Chaucer' s time, which made his 
scansion obsolete. The accent of many words of French 
origin, like natúre, couráge, virtúe, matcre, had shifted 
to the first syllable, and the e of the final syllables es, 
en, ed, and e, had largely disappeared. But the lan- 



56 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

guage of poetry tends to keep up archaisms of this 
kind, and in Stephen Hawes, who wrote a century after 
Chaucer, we still find such lines as these : 

But he my strokés might right well endure, 
He was so great and huge of puissánce.^ 

Hawes' s practice is variable in this respect, and so is 
his contemporary, Skelton's. But in Wyat and Surrey, 
who wrote only a few years later, the reader first feels 
sure that he is reading verse pronounced quite in the 
modern fashion. 

But Chaucer' s example still continued potent. Spen- 
ser revived many of his obsolete words, both in his 
pastorals and in his " Faerie Queene," thereby impart- 
ing an antique remoteness to his diction, but incurring 
Ben Jonson's censure, that he " writ no language." A 
poem that stands midway between Spenser and the late 
medieval work of Chaucer' s school — such as Hawes' s 
" Passetyme of Pleasure" — was the induction contrib- 
uted by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, in 1563 to 
a collection of narrative poems called "The Mirrour for 
Magistrates. ' ' The whole series was the work of many 
hands, modeled upon Lydgate's " Falls of Princes" 
(taken from Boccaccio), and was designed as a warning 
to great men of the fickleness of fortune. The "Induc- 
tion ' ' is the only noteworthy part of it. It was an 
allegory, written in Chaucer' s seven-lined stanza, and 
described, with a somber imaginative power, the figure 
of Sorrow, her abode in the "griesly lake" of Avernus, 
and her attendants, Remorse, Dread, Oíd Age, etc. 
Sackville was the author of the first regular English 
tragedy, ' ' Gorboduc ' ' ; and it was at his request that 
Ascham wrote " The Schoolmaster." 

1 Trisy Hable— like cr'éatüre, neigheboür, etc., in Chaucer. 



From, Chaucer to Spenser. 57 

Italian poetry also fed the genius of Edmund Spenser 
(1552-1599). While a student at Pembroke Hall, f'^JJJg"^'^ 
Cambridge, he had translated some of the ' ' Visions of 
Petrarch," and the "Visions of Bellay," a French 
poet, but it was only in 1579 that the publication of his 
" Shepheardes Calendar" announced the coming of a «-j-he 
great original poet, the first since Chaucer. "The caknda?'^^ 
Shepheardes Calendar ' ' was a pastoral in twelve 
eclogues — one for each month in the year. There had 
been a revival of pastoral poetry in Italy and France, 
but, with one or two insignificant exceptions, Spenser' s 
were the first bucolics in English. Two of his eclogues 
were paraphrases from Clement Marot, a French 
Protestant poet, whose psalms were greatly in fashion at 
the court of Francis I. The pastoral machinery had 
been used by Vergil and by his modern imitators, not 
merely to portray the loves of Strephon and Chloe, or 
the idyllic charms of rustió life, but also as a vehicle of 
compliment, elegy, satire, and personal allusion of many 
kinds. Spenser, accordingly, alluded to his friends '^^Yorí/^* 
Sidney and Harvey as the shepherds Astrophel and 
Hobbinol ; paid court to Queen Elizabeth as Cynthia ; 
and introduced, in the form of anagrams, ñames of the 
High-Church Bishop of London, Aylmer, and the Low- 
Church Archbishop, Grindal. 

The conventional pastoral is a somewhat delicate 
exotic in English poetry, and represents a very unreal 
Arcadia. Before the end of the seventeenth century 
the squeak of the oaten pipe had become a burden, 
and the only poem of the kind which it is easy to 
read without some impatience is Milton's wonderful 
"Lycidas." "The Shepheardes Calendar," however, 
though it belonged to an artificial order of Hterature, 
had the unmistakable stamp of genius in its style. 



58 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



" The Faerie 
Üueeiie." 



There was a broad, easy mastery of the resources of 
language, a grace, fluency, and music which vvere new 
to English poetry. It was written while Spenser was 
in service with the Earl of Leicester, and enjoying the 
friendship of his nephcw, the all-accomplished Sidney, 
and it was, perhaps, composed at the latter's country 
seat of Penshurst. In the foUowing year Spenser went 
to Ireland as prívate secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey of 
Wihon, who had just been appointed lord deputy of 
that kingdom. After fiUing several clerkships in the 
Irish government, Spenser received a grant of the 
castle and estáte of Kilcolman, a part of the forfeited 
lands of the rebel Earl of Desmond. Here, among 
landscapes richly wooded, Uke the scenery of his own 
fairy-land, ' ' under the cooly shades of the green alders 
by the Mulla' s shore," Sir Walter Raleigh found him, 
in 1589, busy upon his "Faerie Queene. " In his 
poem, " Colin Clout's Come Home Again," Spenser 
tells, in pastoral language, how ' ' the shepherd of the 
ocean " persuaded him to go to London, where he 
presented him to the queen, under whose patronage the 
first three books of his great poem were printed, in 
1590. A volume of minor poems, entitled " Com- 
plaints," foUowed in 1591, and the three remaining 
books of "The Faerie Queene" in 1596. In 1595-96 
he published also his "Daphnaida," "Prothalamion," 
and the four hymns on "Love" and "Beauty," and 
on " Heavenly Love" and " Heavenly Beauty." In 
1598, in Tyrone's rebellion, Kilcolman Castle was 
sacked and burncd, and Spenser, with his family, fled 
to London, where he died in January, 1599. 

"The Faerie Queene" reflects, perhaps, more fully 
than any other English work the many-sided literary 
influcnces of the Renaissance. It was the blossom of 



From Chauccr to Spenser. 59 

a richly composite culture. Its immediate models wcre 
Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," the first forty cantos of 
which were published in 15 15, and Tasso's " Gerusa- 
lemme Liberata," printed in 1581. Both of these 
were, in subject, romances of chivalry, the first based 
upon the oíd Charlemagne epos — Orlando being iden- 
tical with the hero of the French ' ' Chanson de 
Roland"; the second upon the history of the first 
crusade and the recovery of the Holy City from the 
Saracen. But in both of theni there was a splendor of 
diction and a wealth of coloring quite unknown to the 
rude medieval romances. Ariosto and Tasso vvrote 
with the great epics of Homer and Vergil constantly in 
mind, and all about them was the brilliant light of Composite 
Italian art, in its early freshness and power. "The t'hework." 
Faerie Queene," too, was a tale of knight-errantry, 
Its hero was King Arthur, and its pages swarm with the 
familiar adventures and figures of Gothic romance : 
distressed ladies and their champions, combats with 
dragons and giants, enchanted castles, magic rings, 
charmed wells, forest hermitages, etc. But side by 
side with these appear the fictions of Greek mythology 
and the personified abstractions of fashionable allegory. 
Knights, squires, wizards, hamadryads, satyrs, and 
river gods, Idleness, Gluttony, and Superstition, jostle 
each other in Spenser' s fairy-land. Descents to the 
infernal shades, in the manner of Homer and Vergil, 
altérnate with descriptions of the Palace of Pride, in the 
manner of ' ' The Romaunt of the Rose. ' ' But Spenser' s 
imagination was a powerful spirit, and held all these 
diverse elements in solution. He removed them to an 
ideal sphere " apart from place, withholding time," 
where they seem all alike equally real, the dateless con- 
ceptions of the poet's dream. 



6o 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Its allegorical 
plan. 



Its verse and 
diction. 



The poem was to have been ' ' a continued allegory or 
dark conceit," in twelve books, the hero of each book 
representing one of the twelve moral virtues. Only six 
books and a fragment of the seventh were written. By 
way of complimenting his patrons and securing contem- 
porary interest, Spenser undertook to make his allegory 
a double one, personal and historical, as well as moral 
or abstract. Thus Gloriana, the Queen of Faery, stands 
not only for Glory but for Elizabeth, to whom the poem 
was dedicated. Prince Arthur is Leicester, as well as 
Magnificence. Duessa is Falsehood, but also Mary 
Queen of Scots. Grantorto is Philip II. of Spain. Sir 
Artegal is Justice, but likewise he is Arthur Grey de 
Wilton. Other characters shadow forth Sir Walter 
Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry IV. of France, etc. ; 
and such public events as the revolt of the Spanish 
Netherlands, the Irish rebellion, the execution of Mary 
Stuart, and the rising of the northern Catholic houses 
against Elizabeth are told in parable. In this way the 
poem reflects the spiritual struggle of the time, the war- 
fare of young England against popery and Spain. The 
allegory is not always easy to foUow. It is kept up 
most carefully in the first two books, but it sat rather 
lightly on Spenser' s conscience, and is not of the essence 
of the poem. It is an ornament put on from the outside 
and detachable at pleasure. 

The " Spenserian stanza," in which "The Faerie 
Queene" was written, was adapted from the ottava rima 
of Ariosto. Spenser changed somewhat the order of 
the rimes in the first eight lines and added a ninth line 
of twelve syllables, thus añording more space to the 
copious luxuriance of his style and the long-drawn 
sweetness of his verse. It was his instinct to dilate and 
elabórate every image to the utmost, and his símiles, 



From Chaucer to Spenser. 6i 

especially — each of which usually filis a whole stanza — 

have the pictorial amplitude of Homer's. Spenser was, 

in fact, a great painter. His poetry is almost purely 

sensuous. The personages in ' ' The Faerie Queene ' ' ^^"^"°j"^ ^f 

are not characters, but richly colored figures, moving to Spenser's 

the accompaniment of delicious music, in an atmosphere 

of serene remoteness from the earth. Charles Lamb 

said that he was the poet's poet, that is, he appealed 

whoUy to the artistic sense and to the love of beauty. 

Not until Keats did another English poet appear so fiUed 

with the passion for outward shapes of beauty, so ex- 

quisitely alive to all impressions of the senses. Spenser 

was, in some respects, more an Italian than an English 

poet. It is said that the Venetian gondoliers still sing 

the stanzas of Tasso's " Gerusalemme Liberata. " It is 

not easy to imagine the Thames bargees chanting pas- 

sages from ' ' The Faerie Queene. ' ' Those English poets 

who have taken strongest hold upon their public have ideal quaiity of 

i 1 • r j . • r hisart. 

done so by their protound mterpretation oí our common 
life. But Spenser escaped altogether from reality inte 
a región of puré imagination. His aerial creations re- 
semble the blossoms of the epiphytic orchids, which 
have no root in the soil, but draw their nourishment 
from the moisture of the air. 

^Tkeir hirth was of the womb of morning dew, 
And ¿heir conception of the glorious prime.f 
Among the minor poems of Spenser the most delight- 
ful were his " Prothalamion " and " Epithalamion." 
The first was a " spousal verse," made for the double S)eJ^'"°*^ 
wedding of the Ladies Catherine and Elizabeth Somer- 
set, whom the poet figures as two white swans that come 
swimming down the Thames, the surface of which the 
nymphs strew with lilies, till it appears " like a bride's 
chamber-floor." 



His Platonism. 



62 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, 

is the burden of each stanza. The ' ' Epithalamion ' ' 
was Spenser's own marriage song, written to crown his 
series of " Amoretti" or love sonnets, and is the most 
splendid hymn of triumphant love in the language. 
Hardly less beautiful than these was " Muiopotmos ; 
or, the Fate of the Butterfly," an addition to the classi- 
cal myth of Arachne, the spider. The four hymns in 
praise of "Love "and "Beauty," " Heavenly Love " 
and "Heavenly Beauty," are also stately and noble 
poems, but by reason of their abstractness and the 
Platonic mysticism which they express, are less gener- 
ally pleasing than the others mentioned. Allegory and 
mysticism had no natural affiliation with Spenser's 
genius. He was a seer of visions, of images full, 
brilliant, and distinct ; and not, like Bunyan, Dante, 
or Havvthorne, a projector into bodily shapes of ideas, 
typical and emblematic ; the shadows which haunt the 
conscience and the mind. 



1. Henry Morley : " English Writers." 4 vols. 
New York : 1887. 

2. Skeat : " Specimens of English Literature, 1394- 
I579-" (Clarendon Press Series. ) Oxford. 

3. "Morte Darthur." London : 1868. 

4. "English and Scottish Ballads." Edited by 
Francis J. Child. 8 vols. Boston: 1859. 

5. Spenser : " Poetical Works. " Edited by Rich- 
ard Morris. London : 1877. 

6. "A Royal Poet." In Washington Irving's 
"Sketch Book." New York : 1864. 



CHAPTER III. 
The Age of Shakspere, 1564-1616. 

The great age of English poetry opened with the 
publication of Spenser's " Shepheardes Calendar" in JíÍ^eüzI- 
1579, and closed with the printing of Milton's "Samson bethan age. 
Agonistes" in 1671. Within this period of little less 
than a century English thought passed through many 
changes, and there were several successive phases of style 
in our imaginative literature. Milton, who acknowl- 
edged Spenser as his master, and who was a boy of eight 
years at Shakspere' s death, lived long enough to wit- 
ness the establishment of an entirely new school of 
poets, in the persons of Dryden and his contemporaries. 
But, roughly speaking, the dates above given mark the 
limits of one literary epoch, which may not improperly 
be called the Elizabethan. In strictness the Elizabethan 
age ended with the queen's death, in 1603. But the 
poets of the succeeding reigns inherited much of the 
glow and splendor which marked the diction of their 
forerunners ; and "the spacious times of great Eliza- 
beth " have been, by courtesy, prolonged to the year of 
the Restoration (1660). There is a certain likeness in 
the intellectual products of the whole period, a large- 
ness of utterance and a high imaginative cast of thought 
which stamp them all alike with the queen's seal. 

Ñor is it by any undue stretch of the royal preroga- Eiizabeth the 
tive that the ñame of the monarch has attached itself to fn"heÍitlKi-^ 
the literature of her reign and of the reigns succeeding *gp„°'^^^'' 
hers. The expression ' ' Victorian poetry ' ' has a rather 
63 



64 From Chaticer to Tennyson. 

absurd sound when one considers how little Victoria 
counts for in the literatura of her time. But in Eliza- 
bethan poetry the maiden queen is really the central 
figure. She is Cynthia, she is Thetis, great queen of 
shepherds and of the sea ; she is Spenser's Gloriana, 
and even Shakspere, the most impersonal of poets, paid 
tribute to her in " Henry VIII.," and, in a more deli- 
cate and indirect way, in the little allegory introduced 
into " Midsummer Night's Dream." 

That very time I saw — but thou couldst not — 
Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took 
At a fair vestal thronéd by the west. 
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow 
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. 
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, 
And the imperial votaress passed on 
In maiden meditation, fancy free — 

an allusion to Leicester's unsuccessful suit for Eliza- 
beth's hand. 

The praises of the queen, which sound through all 
the poetry of her time, seem somewhat overdone to a 
the queen. modem rcadcr. But they were not merely the insipid 

language of courtly compliment. England had never 
before had a female sovereign, except in the instance of 
the gloomy and bigoted Mary. When she was suc- 
ceeded by her more brilliant sister, the gallantry of a 
gallant and fantastic age was poured at the latter's feet, 
the sentiment of chivalry mingling itself with loyalty to 
the crown. The poets idealized Elizabeth. She was 
to Spenser, to Sidney, and to Raleigh, not merely a 
woman and a virgin queen, but the champion of 
Protestantism, the lady of young England. Moreover, 
Elizabeth was a great woman. In spite of the vanity, 



The poets and 



The Age of Shakspere. 65 

caprice, and ingratitude which disfigured her character, 

and the vacillating, tortuous policy which often dis- Her personal 

tinguished her government, she was at bottom a 

sovereign of large views, strong will, and dauntless 

courage. Like her father, she " loved a man,'" and 

she had the magnificent tastes of the Tudors. She was 

a patrón of the arts, passionately fond of shows and 

spectacles, and sensible to poetic flattery. In her royal 

progresses through the kingdom, the universities, the 

nobles, and the cities vied with one another in re- 

ceiving her with plays, reveis, masques, and triumphs, 

in the mythological taste of the day. Says Warton, 

the historian of English poetry : 

When the queen paraded through a country town almost 
every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the show.°^^ °^ 
house of any of her nobiUty, at entering the hall she was 
saluted by the Penates. In the afternoon, when she conde- 
scended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with 
tritons and nereids ; the pages of the family were converted 
into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower ; and the 
footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs. 
When her majesty hunted in the park she was met by Diana, 
who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon 
of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the 
intrusions of Actaeon. 

The most elabórate of these entertainments of which 
we have any notice were, perhaps, the games cele- Herenter- 
brated in her honor by the Earl of Leicester, when she Keniíworth. 
visited him at Keniíworth in 1575. An account of 
these was published by a contemporary poet, George 
Gascoigne, ' ' The Princely Pleasures at the Court of 
Keniíworth," and Walter Scott has made them familiar 
to modern readers in his novel of "Keniíworth." 
Sidney was present on this occasion, and, perhaps, 
Shakspere, then a boy of eleven, and living at Strat- 



66 From Chaucer io Tennyson. 

ford, not far oñ, may have been taken to see the spec- 
tacle ; may have seen Neptune riding on the back of a 
huge dolphin in the castle lake, speaking the copy of 
verses in which he oñered his trident to the empress of 
the sea ; and may have 

heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song. 

But in considering the Hterature of Elizabeth's reign 
it will be convenient to speak first of the prose. While 
foUowing up Spenser's career to its cióse (1599) we 
have, for the sake of unity of treatment, anticipated 
somevvhat the literary history of the twenty years pre- 
ceding. In 1579 appeared a book which had a remark- 
able influence on EngHsh prose. This was John Lyly's 
" Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit." It was in form a 
romance, the history of a young Athenian who went to 
Naples to see the world and get an education ; but it is 
in substance nothing but a series of dialogues on love, 
friendship, religión, etc., written in language which, 
from the title of the book, has received the ñame of 
" euphuism." This new English became very fashion- 
able among the ladies, and ' ' that beauty in court which 
could not parley euphuism," says a writer of 1632, 
"was as little regarded as she which now there speaks 
not French." 

Walter Scott introduced a euphuist into his novel 
"The Monastery, " but the peculiar jargon which Sir 
Piercie Shafton is made to talk is not at all like the real 
euphuism. That consisted of antithesis, alliteration, 
and the profuse illustration of every thought by meta- 
phors borrovved from a kind of fabulous natural history. 
" Descend into thine own conscience and consider with 



The Age of Shakspere. 67 

thyself the great difference between staring and stark- 

blind, wit and wisdom, love and lust : be merry, but inustrations of 

' ' ' •' '_ euphuistn. 

with modesty ; be sober, but not too sullen ; be valiant, 
but not too venturous." " I see now that, as the fish 
Scolopidus in the flood Araxes at the waxing of the 
moon is as white as the driven snow, and at the waning 
as black as the burnt coal ; so Euphues, which at the 
ürst increasing of our famüiarity was very zealous, is 
now at the last cast become most faithless." Besides 
the fish Scolopidus, the favorite animáis of Lyly's menag- 
€rie are such as the chameleon, " which though he have 
most guts draweth least breath ' ' ; the bird Piralis, 
"which sitting upon white cloth is white, upon green, 
green" ; and the serpent Porphirücs, "which, though 
he be full of poison, yet having no teeth, hurteth none 
but himself." 

Lyly's style was pithy and sententious, and his sen- 
tences have the air of proverbs or epigrams. The vice 
of euphuism was its monotony. On every page of the 
book there was something pungent, something quot- 
able ; but many pages of such writing became tiresome. 
Yet it did much to form the hitherto loóse structure of 
English prose, by lending it point and polish. His 
carefully balanced periods were valuable lessons in 
rhetoric, and his book became a manual of polite con- 
versation and introduced that fashion of witty repartee 
which is evident enough in Shakspere' s comic dialogue. 
In 1580 appeared the second part, "Euphues and his 
England," and six editions of the whole work were 
printed before 1598. Lyly had many imitators, In 
Stephen Gosson's " School of Abuse," a tract directed 
against the stage and published about four months later 
than the first part of "Euphues," the language is 
directly euphuistic. The dramatist, Robert Greene, 



Lyly's imita- 
tors. 



68 From Chaucer io Tennyson. 

published, in 1587, his " Menaphon ; Camilla's Alarum 
to Slumbering Euphues," and his " Euphues's Censure 
to Philautus." His brother dramatist, Thomas Lodge, 
published, in 1590, " Rosalynde : Euphues's Golden 
Legacy," from which Shakspere took the plot of "As 
You Like It." Shakspere and Ben Jonson both quote 
from "Euphues" in their plays, and Shakspere was 
really writing euphuism when he wrote such a sentence 
as, " 'Tis true, 'tis pity ; pity 'tis 'tis true." 

That knightly gentleman, PhiHp Sidney, was a true 

Sil- Philip type of the lofty aspiration and manifold activity of 

sidney. Elizabethan England. He was scholar, poet, courtier, 

diplomatist, soldier, all in one. Educated at Oxford 

and then introduced at court by his únele, the Earl of 

Leicester, he had been sent to France when a lad of 

eighteen, with the embassy which went to treat of the 

queen's proposed marriage with the Duke of Alengon, 

and was in Paris at the time of the massacre of St. Bar- 

tholomew, in 1572. Afterward he had traveled through 

Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, had gone as 

ambassador to the emperor's court, and everywhere 

won golden opinions. In 1580, while visiting his sister 

Mary, Countess of Pembroke, at Wilton, he wrote, for 

,,^, her pleasure, "The Countess of Pembroke' s Arcadia," 

1 ne -^ 

Countess of which rcmaiued in manuscript till ISQO. This was a 
pastoral romance, after the manner of the Italian "Ar- 
cadia ' ' of Sanazzaro, and the ' ' Diana Enamorada ' ' of 
Montemayor, a Portuguese author. It was in prose, 
but intermixed with songs and sonnets, and Sidney fin- 
ished only two books and a portion of the third. It 
describes the adventures of two cousins, Musidorus and 
Pyrocles, who were wrecked on the coast of Sparta. 
The plot is very involved and is full of the stock epi- 
sodes of romance : disguises, surprises, love intrigues, 



Pembroke's 
Arcadia. 



The Age of Shakspere. 69 

battles, jousts, and single combats. Although the 
insurrection of the Helots against the Spartans forms a 
part of the story, the Arcadia is not the real Arcadia of 
the Hellenic Peloponnesus, but the fanciful country of 
pastoral romance, an unreal clime, like the fairy-land of 
Spenser. 

Sidney was our first writer of poetic prose. The 
poet Drayton says that he 

did first reduce, 
Our tongue from Lyly's writing, then in use, 
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, 
Playing with words and idle símiles. 

Sidney was certainly no euphuist, but his style was as 
" Italianated " as Lyly's, though in a different way. sidney's 
His English was too pretty for prose. His " Sidneian 
showers of sweet discourse" sowed every page of the 
' ' Arcadia ' ' with those flowers of conceit, those sugared 
fancies, which his contemporaries loved, but which the 
taste of a severer age finds insipid. This splendid vice 
of the Elizabethan writers appears in Sidney, chiefly 
in the form of an excessive personification. If he 
describes a field full of roses, he malees ' ' the roses add 
such a ruddy show unto it, as though the field were 
bashful at his own beauty. " If he describes ladies 
bathing in the stream, he makes the water break into 
twenty bubbles, as ' ' not content to have the picture of 
their face in large upon him, but he would in each of 
those bubbles set forth a miniature of them." And 
even a passage which should be tragic, such as the 
death of his heroine, Parthenia, he embroiders with 
conceits like these : ' ' For her exceeding fair eyes 
having with continued weeping got a little redness 
about them, her round sweetly swelling lips a little 
trembling, as though they kissed their neighbor Death ; 



70 



Fro7n Chaucer to Tennyson. 



' Astrophel 
ndStella." 



in her cheeks the whiteness striving by little and little 
to get upon the rosiness of them ; her neck, a neck of 
alabaster, displaying the wound which with most dainty 
blood labored to drown his own beauties ; so as here 
was a river of purest red, there an island of perfectest 
white," etc. 

The "Arcadia," Hke "Euphues," was a lady's book. 
It was the favorite court romance of its day, but it 
surfeits a modern reader with its sweetness and confuses 
him with its tangle of adventures. The lady for whom 
it was written was the mother of that WilHam Herbert, 
Earl of Pembroke, to whom Shakspere's sonnets are 
thought to have been dedicated. And she was the 
subject of Ben Jonson's famous epitaph : 

Underneath this sable herse 
Lies the subject of all verse, 
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; 
Death, ere thou hast slain another 
Learn'd and fair and good as she, 
Time shall throw a dart at thee. 

Sidney's " Defense of Poesy," composed in 1581, 
but not printed till 1595, was written in manlier Eng- 
Hsh than the "Arcadia," and is one of the very few 
books of criticism belonging to a creative and un- 
critical time. He was also the author of a series of love 
sonnets, "Astrophel and Stella," in which he paid 
Platonic court to the Lady Penelope Rich (with whom 
he was not in love), according to the conventional 
usage of the amorists. 

Sidney died in 1586, from a wound received in a 
cavalry charge at Zutphen, where he was an oíificer in 
the English contingent sent to help the Dutch against 
Spain. The story has often been told of his giving his 
cup of water to a wounded soldier with the words, 



The Age of Shakspere. 71 

" Thy necessity is yet greater than mine." Sidney 
was England's darling, and there was hardly a poet in 
the land from whoni his death did not obtain " the 
meed of some melodious tear." Spenser's " Ruins of 
Time" were among the number of these funeral songs ; 
but the best of them all was by one Matthew Royden, 
concerning whom little is known. 

Another typical Englishman of EHzabeth's reign was 
Walter Raleigh, who was even more versatile than laid^h!^'^ 
Sidney, and more representative of the restless spirit of 
romantic adventure, mixed with cool, practical enter- 
prise that marked the times. He fought against the 
queen's enemies by land and sea in many quarters of 
the globe ; in the Netherlands and in Ireland against 
Spain, with the Huguenot army against the League in 
France. Raleigh was from Devonshire, the great 
nursery of English seamen. He was half-brother to the 
famous navigator, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and cousin to 
another great captain, Sir Richard Grenville. He 
sailed with Gilbert on one of his voyages against the 
Spanish treasure fleet, and in 1591 he published a 
report of the fight, near the Azores, between Grenville' s 
ship, the Revenge, and fifteen great ships of Spain, an 
action, said Francis Bacon, "memorable even beyond 
credit, and to the height of some heroical fable." 
Raleigh was active in raising a fleet against the Spanish 
Armada of 1588. He was present in 1596 at the 
brilliant action in which the Earl of Essex " singed the Hispubiic 

, ° careen 

Spanish king's beard" in the harbor of Cádiz. The 
year before he had sailed to Guiana, in search of the 
fabled El Dorado, destroying on the way the Spanish 
town of San José, in the West Indies ; and on his 
return he published his ' ' Discovery of the Empire of 
Guiana." In 1597 he captured the town of Fayal, 



72 



Froin Chaucer to Tennyson. 



in the Azores. He took a prominent part in colonizing 
Virginia, and he introduced tobáceo and the potato 
plant into Europe. 

America was still a land of wonder and romance, full 
of rumors, nightmares, and enchantments. In 1580, 
when Francis Drake, "the Devonshire Skipper," had 
dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor, after his voyage 
around the world, the enthusiasm of England had been 
mxightily stirred. These narratives of Raleigh, and the 
similar accounts of the exploits of the bold sailors, Davis, 
Hawkins, Frobisher, Gilbert, and Drake, but especially 
the great cyclopedia of nautical travel, pubHshed by 
Richard Hakluyt in 1589, "The Principal Navigations, 
Voyages, and Discoveries made by the English Nation," 
worked povverfully on the imaginations of the poets. 
We see the influence of this literature of travel in ' ' The 
Tempest," written undoubtedly after Shakspere had 
been reading the narrative of Sir George Somers's ship- 
wreck on the Bermudas or " Isles of Devils." 

Raleigh was not in favor with Elizabeth's successor. 
James I. He was sentenced to death on a trumped-up 
charge of high treason. The sentence hung over hini 
until 16 18, when it was revi ved against him and he was 
beheaded. Meanwhile, during his twelve years' im- 
prisonment in the Tower, he had written his mag^ium 
opus, "The History of the World." This is not a 
history in the modern sense, but a series of learned 
dissertations on law, government, theology, magic, 
war, etc. A chapter with such a caption as the follow- 
ing would hardly be found in a universal history 
nowadays : " Of their opinión which make Paradise as 
high as the moon ; and of others which make it higher 
than the middle regions of the air. ' ' The preface and 
conclusión are noble examples of Elizabethan prose, 



The Age of Shakspere. 73 

and the book ends with an oft-quoted apostrophe to 
Death : 

O eloquent, just and mighty Death ! Whom none could 
advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou 
hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only 
hast cast out of the world and despised ; thou hast drawn 
together all the far-fetched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, 
and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two 
narrow words, hic jacet. 

Although so busy a man, Raleigh found time to be a 
poet. Spenser calis him "the summer's nightingale," 
and George Puttenham, in his " Art of English Poesy " 
(1589), finds his "vein most lofty, insolent, and 
passionate." Puttenham used insolent in its oíd sense, 
uncommon; but this description is hardly less true if 
we accept the word in its modern meaning. Raleigh' s 
most notable verses, ' ' The Lie, " are a challenge to the 
world, inspired by indignant pride and the weariness of 
life — the scBva hidignatio of Swift. The same grave 
and caustic melancholy, the same disillusion marks his 
quaint poem, "The Pilgrimage." It is remarkable 
how many of the verses among his few poetical remains 
are asserted in the manuscripts or by tradition to have 
been ' ' made by Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he 
was beheaded." Of one such poem the assertion is 
probably true, namely, the Unes "found in his Bible in 
the gate-house at Westminster." 

Even such is Time, that takes in trust, 
Our youth, our joys, our all we have, 

And pays us but with earth and dust ; 
Who in the dark and silent grave, 

When we have wandered all our ways, 

Shuts up the story of our days ; 

But from this earth, this grave, this dust, 

My God shall raise me up, I trust ! 



74 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Translated 
novéis. 



Controversia! 
pamphlets. 



The strictly literary prose of the Elizabethan period 
bore a small proportion to the verse. Many entire 
departments of prose literature were as yet unde- 
veloped. Fiction was represented — outside of the 
"Arcadia" and " Euphues " already mentioned — 
chiefly by tales translated or imitated from Italian 
novelle. George Turberville's " Tragical Tales " (1566) 
was a collection of such stories, and William Paynter's 
" Palace of Pleasure" (1576-77) a similar collection 
from Boccaccio' s " Decameron " and the novéis of 
Bandello. These translations are mainly of interest as 
having furnished plots to the English dramatists. 
Lodge's "Rosalind" and Robert Greene's " Pan- 
dosto," the sources respectively of Shakspere's "As 
You Like It" and "Winter's Tale," are short pastoral 
romances, not without prettiness in their artificial way. 
The satirical pamphlets of Thomas Nash and his 
fellows, against "Martin Marprelate," an anonymous 
writer, or company of writers, who attacked the bish- 
ops, are not wanting in wit, but are so cumbered 
with fantastic whimsicalities, and so bound up with 
personal quarrels, that oblivion has covered them. 
The most noteworthy of them were Nash's " Piers 
Penniless's Supplication to the Devil," Lyly's " Pap 
with a Hatchet," and Greene's "Groat's Worth of 
Wit." Of books which were not so much literature 
as the material of literature, mention may be made 
of "The Chronicle of England," published by Ralph 
Holinshed in 1580. This was Shakspere's English 
history, and its strong Lancastrian bias influenced 
Shakspere in his representation of Richard III. and 
other characters in his historical plays. In his Ro- 
mán tragedies Shakspere foUowed closely Sir Thomas 
North's translation of " Plutarch's Lives," made in 



The Age of Shakspere. 75 

1579 from the French versión of Jacques Amyot. 

Of books belonging to other departments than puré 
literature, the most important was Richard Hooker's " Ecciesiasticaí 
" Ecclesiastical Polity," the first four books of which °'^' 
appeared in 1594. This was a work on the philosophy 
of law, and a defense, as against the Presbyterians, of 
the government of the English Church by bishops. 
No work of equal dignity and scope had yet been pub- 
lished in English prose. It was written in sonorous, 
stately, and somewhat involved periods, in a Latin 
rather than an English idiom, and it influenced strongly 
the diction of later writers, such as Milton and Sir 
Thomas Browne. Had the ' ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' ' 
been written one hundred, or perhaps even fifty, years 
earlier, it would doubtless have been written in Latin. 

The life of Francis Bacon, "the father of inductive 
philosophy," as he has been called — better, the founder "^ssays." 
of inductive logic — belongs to English history, and the 
bulk of his writings, in Latin and English, to the history 
of English philosophy. But his volume of " Essays " 
was a contribution to general literature. In their com- 
pleted form they belong to the year 1625, but the first 
edition was printed in 1597 and contained only ten short 
essays, each of them rather a string of pregnant max- 
ims — the text for an essay — than that developed treat- 
ment of a subject which we now understand by the word 
essay. They were, said their author, ' ' as grains of salt, 
that will rather give you an appetite than oñend you 
with satiety." They were the first essays, so called, in 
the language. "The word," said Bacon, " is late, but 
the thing is ancient." The word he took from the 
French essais of Montaigne, the first two books of which 
had been published in 1592. Bacon testified that his 
essays were the most popular of his writings because 



76 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Their 
character. 



Character 
books. 



they ' 'carne home to men's business and bosoms. " 
Their altérnate title explains their character : "Counsels 
Civil and Moral," that is, pieces of advice touching the 
conduct of life, " of a nature whereof men shall find 
much in experience, little in books." The essays con- 
tain the quintessence of Bacon's practical wisdom, his 
wide knovvledge of the world of men. The truth and 
depth of his sayings, and the extent of ground which 
they cover, as well as the weighty conipactness of his 
style, have given many of them the currency of prov- 
erbs. " Revenge is a kind of wild justice." " He that 
hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." 
' ' There is no excellent beauty that hath not some 
strangeness in the proportion." Bacon's reason was 
illuminated by a powerful imagination, and his noble 
English rises now and then, as in his essay "On Death," 
into eloquence — the eloquence of puré thought, touched 
gravely and afar ofi by emotion. In general, the atmos- 
phere of his intellect is that lumen siccum which he loved 
to commend, ' ' not drenched or bloodied by the añec- 
tions." Dr. Johnson said that the wine of Bacon's 
writings was a dry wine. 

A popular class of books in the seventeenth century 
were "characters" or " witty descriptions of the prop- 
erties of sundry persons," such as the Good School- 
master, the Clown, the Country Magistrate ; much as 
in some niodern " Heads of the People," where Doug- 
las Jerrold or Leigh Hunt sketches the Medical Student, 
the Monthly Nurse, etc. A still more modern instance 
of the kind is George Eliot's " Impressions of Theo- 
phrastus Such," which derives its tide from the Greek 
philosopher Theophrastus, whose character sketches 
were the original models of this kind of literature. The 
most popular character book in Europe in the seven- 



The Age of Shakspere. 77 

teenth century was La Bruyére's "Caracteres." But 

this was not published till 1688. In England the fashion oveTb'J'ry's^ 

had been set in 1614, by the " Characters " of Sir "Characters. 

Thomas Overbury, who died by poison the year before 

his book was printed. One of Overbury' s sketches — 

"The Fair and Happy Milkmaid" — is justly celebrated 

for its Oíd World sweetness and quaintness. 

Her breath ¡s her ovvn, which scents all the year long of June, 
like a new-made hay-cock. She makes her hand hard with 
labor, and her heart soft with pity ; and when winter evenings 
fall early, sitting at her merry wheel, she sings defiance to the 
giddy wheel of fortune. She bestows her year's wages at next 
fair, and, in choosing her garments, counts no bravery In the 
world Hke decency. The garden and bee-hive are all her 
physic and surgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares 
go alone and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of 
ill, because she means nona ; yet to say truth, she is never 
alone, but is still accompanied with cid songs, honest thoughts 
and prayers, but short ones. Thus Uves she, and all her care 
is she may die in the springtime, to have store of flowers stuck 
upon her windíng-sheet. 

England was still merry England in the times of good 
Queen Bess, and rang with oíd songs, such as kept this fdjf^s^^''^^" 
milkmaid company ; songs, said Bishop Joseph Hall, 
which ' ' were sung to the wheel and sung unto the pail. ' ' 
Shakspere loved their simple minstrelsy ; he put some 
of them into the mouth of Ophelia, and scattered 
snatches of them through his plays, and wrote others 
Hke them himself : 

Now, good Cesarlo, but that piece of song, 
That oíd and antique song we heard last night. 
Methinks it did relieve my passion much. 
More than light airs and recollected terms 
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times. 
Mark it. Cesarlo, it is oíd and plain. 
The knitters and the spinners in the sun 



songs. 



Verse 

ii'llnnies 



78 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

And the free niaids that weave their thrcads willi bones 
Do use tu chaiit ¡t ; it ¡s silly sooth ' 
And llallíes vvith the innocence of love 
Like the oíd age. 

Many of these songs, so natural, frcsli, and sponta- 
noous, togcthcr with sonncts and othcr more elabórate 
atuí somiei fornis t)f Ivrical verse, wcre printcd in misccllanios, such 
as "The Passionate Pilgrim," "England's Helicón," 
and Davison's " Poetical Rhapsody." Some were 
anonynioiis, or were by poets of whom little more is 
knovvn than their ñames. Others were by well-known 
writers, and others, again, were strewn through the 
plays of Lyly, Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, 
and other dramatists. Series of love sonnets, like 
Spcnser's "Amoretti " and Sidney's "Astrophcl and 
Stella," were written by Shakspere, Daniel, Drayton, 
Druinmond, Constable, Watson, and others, all dedi- 
r.isioiais ami cmIchI to some mistress real or imaginary. Pastorals, 
i"»i"s. too, were written in great nuniber, such as William 

Hrowne's " Britannia's Pastorals" and "Shepherd's 
Pipe" (1613-16) and Marlowe's charmingly rococó little 
idyl, "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love," which 
Shakspere quoted in " The Mcrry Wives of Windsor," 
and to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a reply. There 
were love stories in verse, like Arthur Brooke's "Romeo 
and Juliet" (the source of Shakspcre's tragedy), Mar- 
lowe's fragmcnt, " Hero and Leander," and Shakspere' s 
"Venus and Adonis" and "Rape of Lucrece," the 
first of these on an Italian and the other three on 
classical subjects, though handled in anything but a 
classical manner. Wordsworth said fmelyof Shakspere, 
that ho " could not have written an epic : he would 
have dicd t){ a plethora of thought." Shakspcre's two 

1 Simple ti tith. 



The Age of Shakspere. 79 



" Hero and 
Lcaiider." 



narrative j)()oms, ¡lulccd, are by no iiuaiis inodels of 
their kiiul. Tlie cuncnt of ihc slory is chokctl at 
eveiy tuin, ihough it be with goldcn saiul. It is sig- 
niíicant of lüs draniatic habit of miad that dialogue and 
soliUnjuy usurj) the place of narration, and that, in 
"The Ra[)e of Lucrece" especially, the poet lingers 
over ihe analysis of motives and feclings, instead of 
hastening on with the action, as Chauccr, or any born 
story-tcller, would have done. 

In Marlowe's poem there is the same spendthrift 
fancy, although not the same subtlety. In the first two Marlowe's 
divisions of the poem the story does, in some sort, get 
forward ; but in the continuation, by George Chapman 
(vvho wrote the last four "sestiads"'), the path is uttcrly 
lost, "with woodbine and the gadding vine o'ergrown." 
One is remindc'd that modern poetry, if it has lost in 
richness, has gaincd in directncss, when one compares 
any passage in Marlowe and Chapman's "Hero and 
Leander" with Ryron's ringing lines : 

The wiiul is high on Helle's wave, 
As OH that ni};lit of stonuy water, 
Wlien lovc, vvlio scnt, fiirj^ot to save 
Tlie youHj;-, the l)(.'aiitifiil, tlie brave, 
TIk' loncly liope of Sestos' daughter. 

Marlowe's continuator, Chapman, wrote a mmiber of 
jilays, but he is bcst remembered by his royal translation 
of Homer, issued in parts from 1598-1615. This was 
not so much a literal translation of the Greck as a great 
Elizabethan poem, inspired by Homer. It has Homer's 
fire, but not his simplicity ; the encrgy of Chapman's 
fancy kindiing him to run beyond his text into all man- 
ner of figiu-es and conccits, It was written, as has been 
said, as Homer would have written if he liad been an 

1 From Scstos on llio lli-llospoiit, wln n- I Icio (Iwelt. 



Cliapman' 
Hoincr. 



8o From Chaucer io Tennyson. 

Englishman of Cliapman's time. Keats's fine ode, "On 
fiist looking into Chapman's Homer," is well knovvn. 
\\\ his tianslation of the Odyssey Chapman employed 
tho tcn-syllablcd heroic line chosen by most of the 
standard translators ; but for the Iliad he uscd the long 
" fourtccnor," which degcncratcs easily into sing-song 
in the hands of a fccble mctrist. In Chapman it is often 
harsh, but scldom tame, and in many ¡^assagcs it repro- 
duces vvondcrfully the ocean-Hke roll of Homer' s hexam- 
cters. 

From his brii;ht holin aiul sliiold diil burn a niost unwearied 

(no. 
l.ike ricli Autummis' .i;ol<.lon laiiip, wliose briglUncss nien 

¡uliniro 
Fast all iho otlior host o{ stars wlion, willi his choorful face 
l'>osh washed in lofty ocean waves, lie doth the sky cuchase. 

Certainly all latcr versions — Pope's and Cowper's and 
Lord Derby's and Bryant's — seem palé against the 
glowing exuberance of Chapman's English, 

The national pride in the achievements of English- 
men, by land and sea, found expression, not only in 
prose chronicles and in books, like Stow's " Survey of 
London ' ' and Harrison' s ' ' Description of England ' ' 
(prcfixed to Holinshcd's "Chronicle"), but in long 
historical and descriptive poems, likc William Warner' s 
"Albion's England," 15S6; Samuel Daniers " History 
of the Civil Wars," 1 595-1 602 ; Michael Drayton's 
' ' Barons' Wars, ' ' 1 596 ; ' ' England' s Heroical Epistles, ' ' 
1598 ; and " Polyolbion," 16 13. The very plan of 
thcse works was fatal to their succoss. It is not easy to 
digcst history and gcography into poctry. Drayton 
was the most considerable poct of the three, but his 
Oraytoirs "Polyolbion" was nothing more than a "gazetccr in 

rime," a topographical survey of England and Wales, 



nistoi 

poctry 



TolvolW 



The Age of Shakspere. 8i 



with toclious persoiiifications of ri\crs, inouiitaiiis, and 
valleys, iii thirty books aiul ncarly oiie hundrcd tlK>u- 
sand lincs. It was Drayton who said of Marlowc that 
he "liad \\\ him ihose brave translunaiy things that the 
first poets had"; and thcre are brave things in Dray- 
ton, but they are only occasional passages, oases 
among dreary wastes of sand. His "Agincourt" is a ñ'/\f'"^"''V' 
spirited war-song, and his " Nymphidia ; or, Court of piiiJia." 
Faery," is not unvvorthy of coniparison with Drake's 
" Culprit Fay," and is interesting as bringing in Oberon 
and Robín Goodfellow, and the popuhir fairy lore of 
Shakspere' s " Midsummcr Night's Dreani." 

The " well-hinguaged Daniel," of whom Bcn Jonson 
saiil that he was "a good honest man, but no poet," 
wrote, hüwever, one fine meditative piece, his "Epistle 
to the Countess of Cumberland," a sermón apparently 
on the text of the Román poet Lucretius's fanious 
passage in praise of philosophy, 

Suave, mari magno, turbantibus aíquora ventis, 
E térra magiuim alterius spcctare laborem. 

But the Elizabethan genius fouiul its fullest and truest 
cxpression in the drama. It is a conunon phenomenon .p,,^ 
in the history of literature that some oíd literary form or Sa?"""' 
mold will run along for centuries without having any- 
thing poured into it worth keeping, until the moment 
comes when the genius of the time seizes it and makes 
it the vehicle of immortal thought and passion, Such 
was in England the fortune of the stage play. At a 
time when Chaucer was writing character sketches that 
were really dramatic, the formal drama consisted of Jiaysl^"^*^'* 
rude miracle plays that had no literary quality what- 
evcr. These were taken from the Bible, and acted at 
first by the priests as illustrations of Scripture history 



82 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

and additions to the church service on feasts and saints' 
days. Afterward the town guilds, or incorporated 
trades, took hold of them, and produced them annually 
on scaffolds in the open air, In some Enghsh cities, as 
Coventry and Chester, they continued to be performed 
almost to the cióse of the sixteenth century. And in 
the celebrated Passion Play at Oberammergau, in 
Bavaria, we have an instance of a miracle play that has 
survived to our own day. These were foUowed by the 
moral plays, in which allegorical characters, such as 
Clergy, Lusty Juventus, Riches, Folly, and Good 
Demeanaunce were the persons of the drama. The 
comic character in the miracle plays had been the 
Devil, and he was retained in some of the moralities 
side by side with the abstract Vice, who became the 
clown or fool of Shaksperian comedy. The ' ' formal 
Vice, Iniquity," as Shakspere calis him, had it for his 
business to belabor the roaring Devil with his wooden 
sword : 

with his dagger of lath 

In his rage and his wrath 

Cries " Aha ! " to the Devil, 
" Pare your nails, Goodman Evil ! " 

He surváves also in the harlequin of the pantomimes, 
and in Mr. Punch, of the puppet shows, who kills the 
Devil and carries him off on his back, when the latter is 
sent to fetch him to hell for his crimes. 

Masques and interludes — the latter a species of short 
farce — were popular at the court of Henry VIII. 
Elizabeth was often entertained at the universities or at 
the inns of court with Latin plays, or with translations 
from Séneca, Euripides, and Ariosto. Original come- 
dies and tragedles began to be written, modeled upon 
Terence and Séneca, and chronicle histories founded on 



The Age of Shakspere. 83 

the annals of English kings. There was a master of 
the reveis at court, whose duty it was to select plays to 
be performed before the queen, and these were acted 
by the children of the Royal Chapel, or by the choir 
boys of St. Paul's Cathedral. These early plays are of 
interest to students of the history of the drama, and 
throw much light upon the construction of later plays, 
like Shakspere' s ; but they are rude and inartistic, and 
without any literary valué. 

There were also prívate companies of actors main- 
tained by wealthy noblemen, like the Earl of Leicester, The first piay- 

•' ■' . . . houses. 

and bands of stroUing players, who acted in inn-yards 
and bear-gardens. It was not until stationary theaters 
were built and stock companies of actors regularly 
licensed and established that any plays were produced 
which deserve the ñame of literature. In 1576 the first 
London playhouses, known as the Theater and the 
Curtain, were erected in the suburb of Shoreditch, out- 
side the city walls. Later the Rose, the Hope, the 
Globe, and the Swan were built on the Bankside, 
across the Thames, and play-goers resorting to them 
were accustomed to "take boat." These locations 
were chosen in order to get outside the jurisdiction of 
the mayor and Corporation, who were Puritans, and 
determined in their opposition to the stage. For the 
same reason the Blackfriars, belonging to the company 
that owned the Globe — the company in which Shak- 
spere was a stockholder — was built about 1596, within 
the " liberties " of the dissolved monastery of the 
Blackfriars. 

These early theaters were of the rudest construction. 

^T-i • ,, ,,• ,1 1 • Construction 0/ 

Ihe sixpenny spectators, or " groundlmgs, stood m the London 
the yard or pit, which had neither floor ñor roof. The 
shilling spectators sat on the stage, where they were ac- 



84 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



commodated with stools and tobáceo pipes, and whence 
they chañed the actors or the ' ' opposed rascality ' ' in 
the yard. There was no scenery, and the female parts 
were taken by boys. Plays were acted in the afternoon, 
A placard, with the letters "Venice" or "Rome," or 
whatever, indicated the place of the action. With 
such rude appHances must Shakspere bring before his 
audience the midnight battlements of Elsinore and the 
moonht garden of the Capulets. The dramatists had 
to throw themselves upon the imagination of their 
public, and it says much for the imaginative temper of 
the pubhc of that day that it responded to the appeal. 
It suffered the poet to transport it over wide intervals 
of space and time, and ' ' with aid of some íew foot and 
half-foot words, fight over York and Lancaster's long 
jars." Pedantry undertook, even at the very begin- 
nings of the Ehzabethan drama, to shackle it with the 
so-called rules of Aristotle, or classical unities of time 
and place, to make it keep violent action off the stage 
and comedy distinct from tragedy. But the play- 
wrights appealed from the critics to the truer symoa- 
thies of the audience, and they decided for freedom and 
action, rather than restraint and recitation. Henee our 
national drama is of Shakspere and not of Racine. 

By 1603 there were twelve playhouses in London 
in full blast, although the city then numbered only 
one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Fresh 
plays were produced every year. The theater was 
more to the Englishmen of that time than it has ever 
been before or sinee. It was his club, his novel, his 
newspaper, all in one. No great drama has ever flour- 
ished apart from a living stage, and it was fortúnate 
that the Elizabethan dramatists were, almost all of 
them, actors, and familiar with stage efíect. Even the 



The Age of Shakspere. 85 

few exceptions, like Beaumont and Fletcher, who were 
young men of good birth and fortune, and not de- 
pendent on their pens, were probably intímate with the 
actors, lived in a theatrical atmosphere, and knew prac- 
tically how plays should be put on. 

It had now become possible to earn a livelihood as 
an actor and playwright. Richard Burbage and Edward 
Alleyn, the leading actors of their generation, made 
large fortunes. Shakspere himself made enough from 
his share in the profits of the Globe to retire with a 
competence, some seven years before his death, and 
purchase a handsome property in his native Stratford. 
Accordingly, shortly after 1580, a number of men of 
real talent began to write for the stage as a career. The university 

1 f 1 • • • H T witS. 

These were young graduates of the universities, Mar- 
lowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Lyly, Lodge, and others, 
who carne up to town and led a bohemian Ufe as actors 
and playwrights. Most of them were wild and dissi- 
pated and ended in wretchedness. Peele died of a 
disease brought on by his evil courses ; Greene, in 
extreme destitution, from a surfeit of Rhenish wine and 
pickled herring, and Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern 
brawl. 

The euphuist Lyly produced eight plays between 
1584 and 1 60 1. They were written for court enter- Lyiy'scourt 
tainments, mostly in prose and on mythological sub- ^'^^^ 
jects. They have little dramatic power, but the dia- 
logue is brisk and vivacious, and there are several 
pretty songs in them. AU the characters talk euphu- 
ism. The best of these was ' ' Alexander and Cam- 
paspe," the plot of which is briefly as follows : Alex- 
ander has fallen in love with his beautiful captive, 
Campaspe, and employs the artist Apelles to paint her 
portrait. During the sittings Apelles becomes enamored 



86 



From Chaucer to Tennyson, 



' Alexander 
uid Cani- 



of his subject and declares his passion, which is re- 
turned, Alexander discovers their secret, but mag- 
nanimously forgives the treason and joins the lovers' 
hands. The situation is a good one, and capable of 
strong treatment in the hands of a real dramatist. But 
Lyly slips smoothly over the crisis of the action and, in 
place of passionate scenes, gives us clever discourses 
and soliloquies, or, at best, a light interchange of 
question and answer, full of conceits, repartees, and 
double meanings. For example : 

Apel. — Whom do you love best in the world? 
Camp. — He that made me last in the world. 
Apel.—i:\\2X was God. 
Camp. — I had thought it had been a man, etc. 

Lyly's service to the drama consisted in his introduc- 
tion of an easy and sparkling prose as the language of 
high comedy, and Shakspere's indebtedness to the 
fashion thus set is seen in such passages as the vvit com- 
bats between Benedict and Beatrice in " Much Ado 
about Nothing," greatly superior as they are to any- 
thing of the kind in Lyly. 

The most important of the dramatists who were 
Shakspere's forerunners, or early contemporaries, was 
Christopher or — as he was familiarly called — Kit Mar- 
lowe. Born in the same year with Shakspere (1564), 
he died in 1593, at which date his great successor is 
thought to have written no original plays except ' ' The 
Comedy of Errors " and " Love's Labour's Lost." 
Marlowe first popularized blank verse as the language 
of tragedy in his " Tamburlaine," written before 1587, 
and in subsequent plays he brought it to a degree of 
strength and flexibility which left little for Shakspere to 
do but to take it as he found it. ' ' Tamburlaine ' ' was 
a crude, violent piece, full of exaggeration and bom- 



The Age of Shakspere. 



87 



bast, but with passages here and there of splendid 
declamation, justifying Ben Jonson's phrase, " Mar- 
lowe's mighty line." Jonson, however, ridiculed, ¡n 
his "Discoveries," the "scenical strutting and furious 
vociferation " of Marlowe's hero ; and Shakspere put a 
quotation from " Tamburlaine " into the mouth of his 
ranting Fistol. Marlowe's " Edward II." was the most 
regularly constructed and evenly written of his plays. 
It was the best historical drama on the stage before 
Shakspere, and not undeserving of the comparison 
which it has provoked with the latter's " Richard II." 
But the most interesting of Marlowe's plays, to a 
modern reader, is "The Tragical History of Doctor 
Faustus." The subject is the same as in Goethe' s 
"Faust," and Goethe, who knew the English play, 
spoke of it as greatly planned. The opening of Mar- 
lowe's "Faustus" is very similar to Goethe' s. His 
hero, wearied with unprofitable studies and filled with 
a mighty lust for knowledge and the enjoyment of life, 
sells his soul to the Devil in return for a few years of 
supernatural power. The tragic irony of the story 
might seem to lie in the frivolous use which Faustus 
makes of his dearly bought power, wasting it in practi- 
cal jokes and feats of legerdemain ; but of this Mar- 
lowe was probably unconscious. The love story of 
Margaret, which is the central point of Goethe' s drama, 
is entirely wanting in Marlowe's, and so is the subtle 
conception of Goethe' s Mephistopheles. Marlowe's 
handling of the supernatural is materialistic and down- 
right, as befitted an age which believed in witchcraft. 
The greatest part of the English ' ' Faustus ' ' is the last 
scene, in which the agony and terror of suspense with 
which the magician awaits the stroke of the clock that 
signáis his doom are powerfuUy drawn. 



" Doctor 
Faustus.' 



From Chaucer to Temiyson. 



O, lente, lente currite, noctis equi! 

The stars move still, time runs, the dock will strike. . . . 

O soul, be changed into little water-drops, 

And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found ! 

Marlowe's genius was passionate and irregular. He 
had no humor, and the comic portions of "Faustus" 
are scenes of low buffoonery. 

George Peele's masterpiece, " David and Bethsabe," 
was also, in many respects, a fine play, though its 
beauties were poetic rather than dramatic, consisting 
not in the characterization — which is feeble — but in the 
eastern luxuriance of the imagery. There is one noble 
chorus — 

O proud revolt of a presumptuous man, 

which reminds one of passages in Milton's " Samson 
Agonistes," and occasionally Peele rises to such high 
^schylean audacities as this : 

At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt, 
And his fair spouse, with bright and fiery wings, 
Sit ever burning on his hateful bones. 

Robert Greene was a very unequal writer. His plays 
are slovenly and careless in construction, and he puts 
classical allusions into the mouths of milkmaids and 
serving boys, with the grotesque pedantry and want of 
keeping common among the playwrights of the early 
stage. He has, notwithstanding, in his comedy parts, 
more natural lightness and grace than either Marlowe 
or Peele. In his " Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" 
there is a fresh breath, as of the green English country, 
in such passages as the description of Oxford, the scene 
at Harleston Fair, and the picture of the dairy in the 
keeper's lodge at merry Fressingfield. 

In all these ante-Shaksperian dramatists there was a 



The Age of Shakspere. 89 

defect of art proper to the first comers in a new literary 

departure. As compared not only with Shakspere, d^bftPhTs^ 

but with later writers, who had the inestimable advan- predecessors. 

tage of his example, their work was full of imperfection, 

hesitation, experiment. Marlowe was probably, in 

native genius, the equal at least of Fletcher or Webster, 

but his plays, as a whole, are certainly not equal to 

theirs. They wrote in a more developed state of the 

art. But the work of this early school settled the shape 

which the English drama was to take. It fixed the 

practice and traditions of the national theater. It 

decided that the drama was to deal with the whole of 

life, the real and the ideal, tragedy and comedy, prose 

and verse, in the same play, without limitations of 

time, place, and action. It decided that the English 

play was to be an action, and not a dialogue, bringing 

boldly upon the mimic scene feasts, dances, proces- 

sions, hangings, riots, plays within plays, drunken 

reveis, beatings, battle, murder, and sudden death. It 

established blank verse, with occasional riming couplets 

at the cióse of a scene or of a long speech, as the 

language of the tragedy and high comedy parts, and 

prose as the language of the low comedy and ' ' busi- 

ness" parts. And it introduced songs, a feature of 

which Shakspere made exquisite use. Shakspere, in- 

deed, like all great poets, invented no new form of 

literature, but touched oíd forms to finer purposes, 

refining everything, discarding nothing. Even the oíd 

chorus and dumb show he employed, though sparingly, 

as also the oíd jig, or comic song, which the clown used 

to give between the acts. 

Of the life of William Shakspere, the greatest dra- xhe 
matic poet of the world, so little is known that it has Íhak°pere's°^ 
been possible for ingenious persons to construct a p'^^^' 



90 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

tlieory — aiul support ¡t with some show of reason — 
that the plays which pass under his ñame were rcally 
writttn hy Hacon or some one else. There is no 
clangor of this paradox evcr making scrious headvvay, 
for the historical evidence that Shakspere wrote Shak- 
spero's phiys, though not ovcrwhehiiing, is sufficicnt. 
Huí it is startHng- to tliink that the greatest creativa 
gcnius of liis day, or pcrhaps of all time, was suñered to 
slip out of life so qnictly that his title to his own works 
pould oven be questioned only tvvo hundred aml fifty 
years after the event. That the single aulhorship of 
the llomoric poems shonld be doubted is not so 
slrange, for Homcr is ahnost prehistoric. Bnt Sliak- 
s[)cre was a moilorn ICngHshman, and at the time of his 
dcatli the first English colony in America was ah'cady 
nine years oUl. 

The important known facts of his Ufe can be told 
ahnost in a sentence. He was born at Stratford-on- 
Avon in 1564, niarried when he was eightccn, wcnt to 
I.oiulon pri)bal)ly in 13S7, aiui bccamc an actor, pkiy- 
writcr, and .stockholdcr in the company which owned 
the Blackfriars and the Globe Theaters. He seemingly 
prospered, and retired abont 1609 to Stratford, where 
he lived in the housc that he had bought some years 
bcforc, and whcrc he dicd in 16 16. 

ibs "Wmuis aiul AtUmis " was printcil in 1593, his 
"Rape of Lucrcce" in 1594. aiul his "Sonnets" in 
1609. So far as is known, only eighteen of the thirty- 
seven plays generally attributcd to Shakspere were 
printed during his lifetime. Thcse were printetl singly, 
in qnarto shape, antl were little more than stage books, 
or librettos. The tlrst collocled eilition of his works 
was the so-called " l'irst I*\)lio " of 1623, published 
by his fellow-actors Heming and Condell. No con- 



The Age of Shakspere. 91 

temporary of ShakspcMo thought it worth wliilc to write 
a life of the stagc-playor. Thoro are a number of rcfcr- 
ences to him ¡11 the literature of the time ; some gcn- 
erous, as in IUmi Jonsoii's wcU-knowa verses; others 
sin^ulaiiy unap[)rc'(.iati\ c, likc Webster's mcntion of 
"llu' ri^ht liappy aiul cojiious indnstry of Master 
Sliakspnc. " Hiit all these togcthcr do not liegin to 
ainount to tlie suin of what was said about Spenscr, or 
Siíhiey, or Ralcigh, or Hen Jonson. There ¡s, indced, 
iiotliing to sliow that his coiUcniporarios uiulorstood 
what a man tliey had ainong thcm ¡n the person of 
"Our l'.iiglish Terence, Mr, VVill Sliakespeare." The His 

■ it • pcrsonality. 

ago, tor tlie rest, was not a selt-conscions onc, ñor 
grcatly given to ixxicw writuig and literary biography. 
Ñor is thore cMumi^h of sclf-rcvohition in Shakspero's 
pla\s to aid tho ii.ulrr in forniing a notion of tiio man. 
IIclosl his idi'nut)- completely in tlie charactcrs of his 
plays, as il is the (hity of a dramatic writor to do. His 
soniRts have becn e.xamined carefully in scarch of 
iiUiinal ovidence as to his character and hfo, but thi- 
«[«.'culalions foundcd upon tlicm have becn more in- 
genituis tluin conxiiuMnt;. 

Shaksi)ere probably bogan by touching u¡) okl i)lays. 
" Henry VI." and the bloody tragedy of " l'itus 
Anch-onicus," if Shakspere's at all, are dtiubtless only iiis first plays. 
his revisión of pieces already on the stage. "The 
Taming of the Shrew " seems to be an oíd play worked 
over by ShaksjKM'o and some other dramatist, and traces 
of another hand aro thought to be visible in parts of 
"Ileiny VIII.," "Poricles," and "Timón of Athons." 
Snch partnerships were common among the Elizabothan 
dramatists, the most illustrious example being the long 
association of Beaumont and Fletcher. The plays in 
the First Folio were divided into histories, comedies, 



92 From Chaucer io Tcnnyson. 

and tragedies, and it will be convenient to notice them 
briefly in that ordcr. 

It was a stirring- time when the young adventurer 
ratiioticspirit carne to London to try his fortune. Elizabeth liad 

o( his drama. ■' 

finally thrown dovvn the gage of battle to Catholic 
Europe, by the execution of Mary Stuart, in 1587. 
The foUowing year saw the destruction of the colossal 
Armada, which Spain had sent to revenge Mary's 
death ; and hard upon these events foUovved the gallant 
exploits of Grenville, Essex, and Raleigh. 

That Shakspere shared the exultant patriotism of the 
times, and the sense of their aloofness from the con- 
tinent of Europe, which was now born in the breasts of 
EngHshmen, is evident from many a passage in his 
plays. 

Tliis happy breed of men, this little world, 

This precious stone set ¡n a silver sea, 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 

England, bound in with the triumphant sea ! 

His EngUsh histories are ten in number. Of these 
" King John" and " Henry VIII." are isolated plays. 
The hisi0ric.1i The others form a consecutive series, in the foUowing 
order : " Richard II.," the two parts of " Henry IV.," 
" Henry V.," the three parts of "Henry VI.," and 
" Richard III." This series may be divided into two, 
each forming a tetralogy, or group of four plays. In 
the íirst the subject is the rise of the House of Lancaster. 
But the power of the Red Rose was founded in usurpa- 
tion. In the second group, accordingly, comes the 
Nemesis, in the civil wars of the Roses, reaching their 
catastrophe in the downfall of both Lancaster and York 
and the tyranny of Gloucester. The happy conclusión 
is finally reached in the last play of the series, when 



plays. 



The Age of Shakspere. 93 

this new usurper is overthrown in turn, and Henry 
VII., the first Tudor sovereign, ascends the throne and 
restores the Lancastrian inheritance, purified, by bloody 
atonement, from the stain of Richard II. 's murder, 
These eight plays are, as it were, the eight acts of one 
great drama ; and, if such a thing were possible, they 
should be represented on successive nights, like the 
parts of a Greek trilogy. In order of composition the 
second group carne first. "Henry VI." is strikingly 
inferior to the others. "Richard III," is a good 
acting play, and its popularity has been sustained by a 
series of great tragedians, who have taken the part of 
the king, But, in a Hterary sense, it is unequal to 
"Richard II.," or the tvvo parts of "Henry IV." 
The latter is unquestionably Shakspere' s greatest 
historical tragedy, and it contains his master-creation 
in the región of low comedy, the immortal Falstaff. 

The constructive art with which Shakspere shaped 
history into drama is well seen in comparing his ' ' King 
John ' ' with the two plays on that subject which were 
already on the stage. These, like all the other oíd 
"Chronicle histories," such as "Thomas Lord Crom- 
well " and "The Famous Victories of Henry V.," 
follow a merely chronological, or biographical, order, 
giving events loosely, as they occurred, without any 
unity of effect, or any reference to their bearing on the 
catastrophe. Shakspere' s order was logical. He com- 
pressed and selccted, disregarding the fact of history 
oftentimes in favor of the higher truth of fiction ; 
bringing together a crime and its punishment as cause 
and eñect, even though they had no such relation in 
the chronicle, and were separa ted, perhaps, by many 
years. 

Shakspere' s first two comedies were experiments. 



Dramatic 

treatme: 

history. 



94 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



" Love's Labour's Lost" was a play of manners, with 
hardly any plot. It brought together a number of 
humors, that is, oddities and affectations of various 
sorts, and played them off on one another, as Ben 
Jonson afterward did in his comedies of humor. Shak- 
spere never returned to this type of play, unless, 
perhaps, in "The Taming of the Shrew." There the 
story turned on a single "humor," Katharine's 
bad temper, just as the story in Jonson's " Silent 
Woman" turned on Moróse' s hatred of noise. "The 
Taming of the Shrew" is, therefore, one of the least 
Shaksperian of Shakspere's plays ; a bourgeois domes- 
tic comedy, with a very narrow interest. It belongs 
to the school of French comedy, like Moliere' s " Malade 
Imaginaire," not to the romantic comedy of Shakspere 
and Fletcher. 

' ' The Comedy of Errors ' ' was an experiment of an 
exactly opposite kind. It was a play purely of inci- 
dent ; a farce, in which the main improbability being 
granted, namely, that the twin Antipholi and twin 
Dromios are so alike that they cannot be distinguished, 
all the amusing complications follow naturally enough. 
There is little character-drawing in the play. Any two 
pairs of twins, in the same predicament, would be 
equally droll. The fun lies in the situation. This was 
a comedy of the Latin school, and resembled the 
"Menaechmi" of Plautus. Shakspere never returned 
to this type of play, though there is an element of 
"errors" in " Midsummer Night's Dream " and in 
" Twelfth Night. " 

In "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" he finally hit 
upon that species of romantic comedy which he may be 
said to have invented or created out of the scattered 
materials at hand in the works of his predecessors. In 



The Age of Shakspere. 95 

this play, as in "The Merchant of Venice," " Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream," "Much Ado about Nothing," 
"As YouLikelt," " Twelfth Night, " " Winter'sTale," 
"All's Well that Ends Well," "Measure for Measure," 
and "The Tempest," the plan of construction is as fol- Pianof 
lows : There is one main intrigue carried out by the high 
comedy characters, and a secondary intrigue, or under- 
plot, by the low comedy characters. The former is by 
no means purely comic, but admits the presentation of 
the noblest motives, the strongest passions, and the 
most dehcate graces of romantic poetry. In some of 
the plays it has a prevaiHng lightness and gaiety, as in 
"As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night." In others, 
like "Measure for Measure," it is barely saved from 
becoming tragedy by the happy cióse. Shylock cer- 
tainly remains a tragic figure, even to the end, and a 
play like "Winter's Tale," in which the painful situa- 
tion is prolonged for years, is only technically a 
comedy. Such dramas, indeed, were called, on many 
of the title-pages of the time, " tragi-comedies." The 
low comedy interlude, on the other hand, was broadly 
comic. It was cunningly interwoven with the texture 
of the play, sometimes loosely, and by way of variety or 
relief, as in the episode of Touchstone and Audrey, in 
"As You Like It" ; sometimes closely, as in the case 
of Dogberry and Verges, in ' ' Much Ado about Noth- 
ing," where the blundering of the watch is made to 
bring about the dénouement of the main action. ' ' The 
Merry Wives of Windsor " is an exception to this plan ^^ exception 
of construction. It is Shakspere' s only play of contem- to'hepian. 
porary, middle-class English life, and is written almost 
throughout in prose. It is his only puré comedy, ex- 
cept " The Taming of the Shrew." 

Shakspere did not abandon comedy when writing 



96 



From Chaucer io Tennyson. 



of 

iiml 



trag-edy, though lie turned it to a iicw account. The 
two species gradcd into one anothcr. Thus "Cynibe- 
linc" is, \\\ its fortúnate ending, rcally as much of a 
cüinody as " WiiUer's Tale " — to which its plot bears a 
rescniblance — and is only technically a tragedy because 
it contains a violent death. In some of the tragedies, 
as in "Macbcth" and " Julius Cresar," the comedy 
cloniont is rcduced to a niininiuni. Rut in othcrs, as 
"Romeo and Juliet " and " Hanilet," it hcighlens the 
tragic feeling by the irony of contrast. Akin to this 
is tlie use to which Shaks[)erc put the oíd Vice, or 
Clown, of the moralities. The Fool in "Lear," Touch- 
stone in "As You Likc It," and Thcrsites in " Troilus 
and Crcssida," are a sort of parody of the function of 
the Grcek chorus, commenting the action of the drama 
with scraps of bitter, or half-crazy, philosophy, and 
wontlerful gleanis of insight into the depths of man's 
naturo. 

The earlicst of Shakspere's tragedies, unless " Titus 
Andronicus" be his, was, doubtless, "Romeo and 
Juliet," which is fuU of the passion and poetry of youth 
and of first love. It contains a large proportion of riming 
lines, which is usually a sign in Shakspere of early work. 
He dropped rime more and more in his later plays, and 
his blank verse grew freer and more varied in its pauses 
and the number of its feet. " Romeo and Juliet" is 
also unique, among his tragedies, in this respect, that 
the catastro[)he is brought about by a fatality, as in the 
Greek drama, It was Shakspere's habit to work out 
his tragic conclusions from within, through character, 
rather than through cxternal chances. This is true of 
all the great tragedies of his middle life, "Hamlet," 
' ' Olhello, " " Lear, " " Macbeth, ' ' in every one of which 
the catastrophe is involvcd in the character and actions 



The Age of Shakspere. 97 

c>f thc heic\ This is so, in a spccial scnsc, iii "Ilam- 
let," ihe subtlcst of all Shakspere' s plays, and, if not 
his masterpiece, at any rate the ene which has most 
attracted and puzzlcd the greatest minds. It is observ- 
able that in Shakspere' s comedies there is no ene 
central figure, but that, in passing into tragedy, he in- 
tcnsificd and concentrated the attention upon a single 
character. This diñercncc is seen even in the naming 
of the plays ; the tragedies always take their titles from 
their héroes, the comedies ncver. 

Somewhat later, probably, than the tragedles already 
mentioned were the three Román plays, "Julias Caesar," OriRinaiUy 

_ . , ,, , , , >^, . of tlic Román 

"Coriolanus, and "Antony and Cleopatra. It is piays. 
characteristic of Shakspere that he invented the plot of 
none of his plays, but took material that he found at hand. 
In these Román tragedies he followed Plutarch closely, 
and yet, even in so doing, gave, if possible, a greater 
evidence of real creative power than when he borrowed 
a mere outline of a story from some Italian novciist. It 
is most instructive to compare "Julius Caisar " with 
Ben Jonson's "Catiline" and "Sejanus. " Jonson was 
careful not to go beyond his text. In "Catiline" he 
translates almost literally the whole of Cicero' s first 
oration against Catiline. "Sejanus" is a mosaic of 
passages from Tacitus and Suetonius. There is none of 
this dead Icarning in Shakspere's play. Havinggrasped 
the conceptions of the characters of Brutus, Cassius, and 
Mark Antony, as Plutarch gave them, he pushed theni 
out into their conscquences in every vvord and act, so 
independently of his original, and yet so harmoniously 
with it, that the reader knows that he is reading history, 
and needs no further vvarrant for it than Shakspere's own, 
"Timón of Athens" is the least agreeable and most ._. 

* . 'Timón oí 

monotonous of Siíakspcre's undoubtod tragedles, and Athens." 



98 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



" Troilus and Cressida," said Coleridge, is the hardest 
to characterize. The figures of the oíd Homeric world 
faro but hardly under the glaring hght of modern stand- 
ards of morality which Shakspere turns upon them. 
Ajax becomcs a stupid bully, Ulysses a crafty poHtician, 
and swift-footcd Achules a vain and sulky chief of 
faction. In losing their ideal remoteness the héroes of 
the Iliad lose their poetic quality, and the lover of 
I lomer experiences an unpleasant disenchantnient. 

It was customary in the eighteenth century to speak 
of Shakspere as a rude though prodigious genius. 
Even Milton could describe him as "warbling his native 
wood-notes wild." But a truer criticism, beginning in 
England with Coleridge, has shovvn that he was also a 
profound artist. It is truc that he wrote for his audi- 
ences, and that his art is not everyvvhere and at all 
points perfect. But a grcat artist will contrive, as Shak- 
spere did, to reconcile practical exigencies, like those of 
the public stage, with the finer requirements of his art. 
Strained interpretations have been put upon this or that 
Ítem in Shakspere' s plays ; and yet it is generally true 
that some deeper reason can be assigned for his method 
in a given case than that "the audience liked puns," 
or, " the audience liked ghosts." 

Compare, for example, his delicate management of the 
sujjernatural with Marlowe's procedure in "Faustus." 
Shakspere' s age believed in witches, elves, and appari- 
tions ; and yet there is always something shadowy or 
allcgorical in his use of such machinery. The ghost in 
" Hamlet" is merely an embodicd suspicion. Banquo's 
wraith, which is invisible to all but Macbeth, is the 
haunting of an evil conscience. The witches in the 
same play are but the promptings of ambition, thrown 
into a human shape so as to become actors in the 



The Age of Shakspere. 99 

drama. In the same way, the fairies in " Midsummer 
Night's Dream" are the personified capriccs of the 
lovers, and they are unseen by the human characters, 
whose Hkes and disHkes they control, save in the in- 
stance where Bottom is "translated" (that is, becomes 
mad) and has sight of the invisible world. So in "The 
Tempest," Ariel is the spirit of the air and Caliban of 
the earth, ministering, with more or Icss of unwilling- 
ness, to man's necessities. 

Shakspere is the most universal of writers. He 
touchcs more men at more points than Homer, or ^"d^permá-^ 
Dante, or Goethe. The dcepcst wisdom, the sweetest l^^lt\tmí' 
poetry, the widest range of character are combined in 
his plays. He made the English language an organ of 
expression unexcelled in the history of literature. Yet 
he is not an English poet simply, but a world-poet. 
Germán y has made him her own, and the Latin races, 
though at first hindered in a true appreciation of him 
by the canons of classical taste, have at length learned 
to know him. An ever-growing mass of Shaksperian 
literature, in the way of comment and interpretation, 
critical, textual, historical, or illustrative, testifies to the 
durability and growth of his fame. Above all, his 
plays still keep, and probably always will keep, the 
stage. It is common to speak of vShakspere and the 
other Elizabethan dramatists as if they stood, in some 
sense, on a level. But in truth there is an almost 
measureless distance between him and all his con- 
temporaries. The rest shared with him in the mighty 
influences of the age. Their plays are touched here 
and there with the power and splendor of which they 
were all joint heirs. But, as a whole, they are obso- 
lete. They Uve in books, but not in the hearts and on 
the tongues of men. 



Fro7n Chaucer to Teyínyson. 



The most remarkable of the dramatists contemporary 
with Shakspere was Ben Jonson, whose robust figure is 
in striking contrast with the other's gracious imper- 
sonality, Jonson was nine years younger than Shak- 
spere. He was educated at Westminster School, 
served as a soldier in the Low Countries, became an 
actor in Henslowe's company, and was twice im- 
prisoned — once for killing a fellow-actor in a duel, and 
once for his part in the comedy of " Eastward Hoe," 
which gave offense to King James. He Hved down to 
the time of Charles I. (1635), and became the ac- 
knowledged arbiter of English letters and the center of 
convivial wit combats at the Mermaid, the Devil, and 
other famous London taverns. 

What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ; heard words that have been 
So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whom they carne 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of hisduUlife.» 

The inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey is 
simply 

O rare Ben Jonson ! 

Jonson' s comedies were modeled upon the vctus 
comocdia of Aristophanes, which was satirical in pur- 
pose, and they belonged to an entirely diñerent school 
from Shakspere' s. They were classical and not ro- 
mantic, and were puré comedies, admitting no admix- 
ture of tragic motives. There is hardly one lovely or 
beautiful character in the entire range of his dramatic 
creations. They were comedies not of character, in 
the high sense of the word, but of manners or humors. 

1 Francis Beaumont, " Letter to Ben Jonson." 



The Age of Shakspere. 



His design was to lasli the follies and vices of the day, 

and his dratnatis personce consisted for the most part of 

guUs, impostora, fops, cowards, swaggering braggarts, 

and " Pauls men." In his first play, " Every Man in 

his Humor" (acted in 1598), in "Every Man out of 

his Humor," " Bartholomew Fair," and, indeed, in all 

of his comedies, his subject was the fashionable affecta- 

tions, the whims, oddities, and eccentric developments hís subject. 

of London life. His procedure was to bring together a 

number of these fantastic humorists, and "squeeze out 

the humor of such spongy souls," by playing them off 

upon each other, involving them in all manner of 

comical misadventures, and rendering them utterly 

ridiculous and contemptible. There was thus a perish- 

able element in his art, for manners change ; and, how- 

ever effective this exposure of contemporary añecta- 

tions may have been before an audience of Jonson's 

day, it is as hard for a modern reader to detect his 

points as it will be for a reader two hundred years 

henee to understand the satire upon the aesthetic craze 

in such pieces of the present day as ' ' Patience ' ' or 

"The Colonel." Nevertheless, a patient reader, with 

the help of copious foot-notes, can gradually put 

together for himself an image of that world of obsolete 

humors in which Jonson's comedy dwells, and can 

admire the dramatist's solid good sense, his great 

learning, his skill in construction, and the astonishing 

íertility of his invention. 

His characters are not revealed from within, like 
Shakspere' s, but built up painfuUy from outside by a jonson's 
succession of minute, laborious particulars. The differ- í„ahod"^ 
ence will be plainly manifest if such a character as Sien- s?iakspere's!"' 
der, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," be compared 
with any one of the inexhaustible variety of idiots in 



I02 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Jonson's plays ; with Master Stephen, for cxample, in 
" Evcry Man in his Humor" ; or, if F'alstañ be put side 
by side with Captain Bobadil, in the same comedy, per- 
hajxs Jonson's mastcrpiece in the way of comic carica- 
ture. "Cynthia's Reveis" was a satire on the courtiers 
and "The Poetaster" on Jonson's literary enemies. 
" The Alchcmist" was an exposure of quackery, and is 
one of his best comedies, but somewhat overweighted 
with k-aniing. " Vol[K-)ne" is the most powerful of all 
his dramas, but is a harsh and disagreeable piece ; and 
the state of society which it depicts is too revoltingf 
for comedy. "The Silent Woman" is, perhaps, the 
oasiest of all Jonson's plays for a modern reader to 
follow and appreciate. There is a distinct plot to it, 
the situation is extremcly ludicrous, and the emphasis is 
laid up(ín a single humor or eccentricity, as in some of 
Moliere's lighter comedies, like "Le Malade Imagi- 
nairc" or " Le Médecin Malgré Lui." 

1 11 s|)ite of his heaviness in drama, Jonson liad a 
l¡i;lit oiiough touch iii lyric poetry. His songs have 
iiol the carelcss swectness of Shakspere's, but they 
ha\e a grace of their own. Such pieces as his "Love's 
Triumph," " Hymn to Diana," the adaptation from 
Philostratus, 

Driiilc \.vi me only with thino eyes, 

and many otliers entille their author to rank among the 
first of English lyrists. Some of these occur in his 
two eollections of niiscellaneous verse, "The Forest" 
and " Underwoods" ; others in the numerous masques 
which he composed. These were a species of enter- 
tainment, very popular at the court of James L, com- 
bining dialogue with music, intricate dances, and costly 
scenery. Jonson left an uníinished pastoral drama, 



The Age of Shakspere. 103 

"The Sad Shepherd," which contains passages of great "xheSad 
beauty ; one, cspecially, descriptive of the shepherdess ^ ^p ^^'^ • 

Earine, 
Wlu) liad her very beint; aiul lier ñame 
VVitli llie lírst biids and hreathinjís of the spring, 
Born vvith the i)rimn)se and the violet 
And earhest roses hlovvn. 



1. George Saintsbury : "A History of Eliza- 
bethan Literature." London : 1877. 

2. Palgrave : " Golden Treasury of Sonji^s and 
Lyrics." London : 1877. 

3. "The Courtly Poets from Raleigh to Montrose." 
Edited by J. Hannah. London : 1870. 

4. ' ' The Countess of Penibroke's Arcadia. ' ' London : 
1867. 

5. Bacon : " Essays." Edited by W. Aldis Wright. 

6. "The Cambridge Shakspere." 

7. Charles Lamb : " Specimens of English Dra- 
matic Poets." 

8. Ben Jonson : " Volpone " and "The Silent 
Wonian." Cunningham's Edition. 3 vols. 



temper under 
the Stuarts 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Age of Milton, i 608-1 674. 

The Elizabethan age proper closed with the death of 
the queen and the accession of James I., in 1603, but 
the literature of the fifty years following was quite as 
rich as that of the half-century that had passed since 
changeof she came to the throne, in 1557. The same qualities 

of thought and style which had marked the writers of 
her reign prolonged themselves in their successors, 
through the reigns of the first two Stuart kings and the 
Commonwealth. Yet there was a change in spirit. 
Literature is only one of the many forms in which the 
national mind expresses itself. In periods of political 
revolution, Hterature, leaving the serene air of fine art, 
partakes of the violent agitation of the times. There 
were seeds of civil and reUgious discord in EHzabethan 
England. As between the two parties in the church 
there was a compromise and a truce rather than a final 
settlement. The Anglican doctrine was partly Calvin- 
istic and partly Arminian. The form of government 
was episcopal, but there was a large body of Pres- 
byterians in the church who desired a change. In the 
ritual and ceremonies many * ' rags of popery ' ' had 
been retained, which the extreme reformers wished to 
tear away. But Elizabeth was a worldly-minded woman, 
impatient of theological disputes. Though circum- 
stances had made her the champion of Protestantism in 
Europe she kept many Catholic notions ; disapproved, 
for example, of the marriage of priests, and hated 
104 



The Age of Milton. 105 

sermons. She was jealous of her prerogative in the 
State, and in the church she enforced uniformity. The 
authors of the ' ' Martin Marprelate ' ' pamphlets against 
the bishops were punished by death or imprisonment. 
While the queen hved things were kept well together 
and England was at one in face of the common foe. 
Admiral Howard, who commanded the EngHsh naval 
forces against the Armada, was a CathoHc. 

But during the reign of James I. (1603-1625) and 
Charles I. (162^-1640) Puritanism grew stronger Riseof 

^ ^ 11, 1 1- • Puntanism. 

through repression. "England,' says the historian 
Green, "became the people of a book, and that book 
the Bible." The power of the king was used to 
impose the power of the bishops upon the English and 
Scotch Churches until religious discontent became also 
political discontent, and finally overthrew the throne. 
The writers of this period divided more and more into 
two hostile camps. On the side of church and king 
was the bulk of the learning and genius of the time. 
But on the side of free religión and the Parliament 
were the stern conviction, the fiery zeal, the exalted 
imagination of English Puritanism. The spokesman 
of this movement was Milton, whose great figure 
dominates the literary history of his generation, as 
Shakspere does of the generation preceding. 

The drama went on in the course marked out for it 
by Shakspere' s example until the theaters were closed Beaumontand 
by Parliament in 1642. Of the Stuart dramatists the 
most important were Beaumont and Fletcher, all of 
whose plays were produced during the reign of James I. 
These were fifty-three in number, but only thirteen of 
them were joint productions. Francis Beaumont was 
twenty years younger than Shakspere, and died a 
few years before him. He was the son of a judge of 



Fletcher. 



io6 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Decadence of 
the drama. 



Beaumont and 
Fletcher. 



the Common Pleas. His collaborator, John Fletcher, a 
son of the bishop of London, was five years older than 
Beaumont, and survived him nine years. He was much 
the more prolific of the two and wrote alone some forty 
plays. Although the life of one of these partners was 
conterminous with Shakspere's, their works exhibit a 
later phase of the dramatic art. The Stuart dramatists 
followed the lead of Shakspere rather than of Ben 
Jonson, Their plays, like the former's, belong to the 
romantic drama. They present a poetic and idealized 
versión of life, deal with the highest passions and the 
wildest buñoonery, and introduce a great variety of 
those daring situations and incidents which we agree to 
cali romantic. But, while Shakspere seldom or never 
overstepped the modesty of nature, his successors ran 
into every license. They sought to stimulate the jaded 
appetite of their audience by exhibiting monstrosities of 
character, unnatural lusts, subtleties of crime, virtues 
and vices both in excess. 

Beaumont and Fletcher' s plays are much easier and 
more agreeable reading than Ben Jonson' s. Though 
often loóse in their plots and without that consistency 
in the development of their characters which distin- 
guished Jonson' s more conscientious workmanship, they 
are fuU of graceful dialogue and beautiful poetry. Dry- 
den said that after the Restoration two of their plays 
were acted for one of Shakspere's or Jonson' s through- 
out the year, and he added that they ' ' understood and 
imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better, 
whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repar- 
tees no poet can ever paint as they have done." Wild 
debauchery was certainly not the mark of a gentleman 
in Shakspere, ñor was it altogether so in Beaumont and 
Fletcher. Their gentlemen are gallant and passionate 



The Age of Milton. 107 

lovers, gay cavaliers, generous, courageous, courteous — 
according to the fashion of their times — and sensitive on 
the point of honor. They are far superior to the cold- 
blooded rakes of Dryden and the Restoration comedy. 
Still the manners and language in Beaumont and 
Fletcher's plays are extremely Hcentious, and it is not 
hard to sympathize with the objections to the theater 
expressed by the Puritan writer, WilHam Prynne, who, 
after denouncing the long hair of the cavahers in his 
tract, "The Unlovehness of Lovelocks," attacked the immoraiity of 

.... their plays. 

stage, in 1633, with " Histrio-mastix : the Player's 
Scourge"; an ofíense for which he was fined, im- 
prisoned, pilloried, and had his ears cropped. Cole- 
ridge said that Shakspere was coarse, but never gross. 
He had the heakhy coarseness of nature herself. But 
Beaumont and Fletcher's pages are corrupt. Even 
their chaste women are immodest in language and 
thought. They use not merely that frankness of 
speech which was a fashion of the times, but a pro- 
fusión of obscene imagery which could not proceed 
from a puré mind. Chastity with them is rather a 
bodily accident than a virtue of the heart, says Cole- 
ridge. 

Among the best of their light comedies are ' ' The 
Chances," "The Scornful Lady," "The Spanish 
Cúrate," and " Rule a Wife and Have a Wife. " But 
far superior to these are their tragedles and tragi- 
comedies, "The Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster, " "A 
King and No King" — all written jointly — and " Valen- 
tinian " and " Thierry and Theodoret," written by 
Fletcher alone, but perhaps, in part, sketched out by 
Beaumont. The tragic masterpiece of Beaumont and 
Fletcher is "The Maid's Tragedy," a powerful but "xhe Maid's 
repulsive play, which sheds a singular light not only '^''^s^^y- 



io8 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

upon its authors' dramatic methods, but also upon the 
attitude toward royalty favored by the doctrine of the 
divine right of kings, which grevv up under the Stuarts. 
Thepiot. Tiie heroine, Evadne, has been in secret a mistress of 

the king, who marries her to Amintor, a gentleman of 
his court, because, as she explains to her bridegroom on 
the wedding night, 

I must have one 
To father children, and to bear the ñame 
Of husband to me, that my sin may be 
More honorable. 

This scene is, perhaps, the most affecting and im- 
pressive in the whole range of Beaumont and Fletcher's 
drama. Yet when Evadne ñames the king as her 
paramour, Amintor exclaims : 

O thou hast named a word that wipes away 
AU thoughts revengeful. In that sacred ñame 
"The king" there lies a terror. What frail man 
Dares lift his hand against it ? Let the gods 
Speak to him when they please ; til! when, let us 
Suñer and wait. 

And the play ends with the vvords 

On lustful kings 
Unlooked-for sudden deaths from heaven are sent, 
But cursed is he that is their instrument. 

Aspatia, in this tragedy, is a good instance of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's pathetic characters. She is troth- 
pHght wife to Amintor, and after he, by the king's 
command, has forsaken her for Evadne, she disguises 
herself as a man, provokes her unfaithful lover to a 
duel, and dies under his sword, blessing the hand that 
killed her. This is a common type in Beaumont and 
Fletcher, and was drawn originally from Shakspere's 
OpheHa. All their good women have the instinctive 



Kemale 
characters. 



The Age of Milton. 



109 



fidelity of a doj^, and a superhuman patience and devo- 
tion, a " gentle forlornness " under wrongs, which is 
painted with an almost femiiiine tenderness. In " Phi- 
laster, or Love Lies Bleeding," Euphrasia, conceiving a 
hopeless passion for Philaster — who is in love with 
Arethusa — puts on the dress of a page and enters his 
service. He employs her to carry messages to his 
lady-love, just as Viola, in " Twelfth Night," is sent 
by the duke to Olivia. Philaster is persuaded by 
slanderers that his page and his lady have been unfaith- 
ful to him, and in his jealous fury he wounds Euphrasia 
with his sword. Aflerward, convinced of the boy's 
fidelity, he asks forgiveness, whereto Euphrasia replies, 

Alas, my lord, niy life is iiot a thing 
Worthy your noble thou^hts. 'Tis not a life, 
'Tis but a piece of childhood Ihrown away. 

Beaumont and Fletcher's love-lorn maids wear the 
willow very sweetly, but in all their piteous passages 
there is nothing equal to the natural pathos — the 
pathos which arises from the deep springs of character 
— of that one brief question and answcr in " King 
Lear. ' ' 

Lear. So young and so untender ? 

Cordelia. So youn<í, my lord, and true. 

The disguise of a woman in man's ai)parel is a com- 
mon incidcnt in the romantic drama ; and the fact that 
on the Elizabethan stage the female parts were taken by 
boys made the deception easier. Viola' s situation in 
"Twelfth Night" is precisely similar to Euphrasia' s, 
but there is a difference in the handling of the device 
which is characteristic of a distinction between Shak- 
spere's art and that of his contemporaries. The audi- 
ence in "Twelfth Night" is taken into confidcnce and 



DiflFerenceof 
Shakspere's 
and Fletcher's 
dramatic 
methods. 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



probability. 



made aware of Viola' s real nature from the start, while 
Euphrasia's incógnito is preserved till the fifth act, and 
then disclosed by an accident. This kind of mysti- 
fication and surprise was a trick below Shakspere. In 
this instance, moreover, it involved a departure from 
dramatic probability. Euphrasia could, at any moment, 
by revealing her identity, have averted the greatest 
Departure from sufferings and dangers from Philaster, Arethusa, and 

dramatic ^ ° ^ 

herself, and the only motive for her keeping silence is 
represented to have been a feeling of maidenly shame at 
her position. Such strange and fantastic motives are 
too often made the pivot of the action in Beaumont and 
Fletcher's tragi-comedies. Their characters have not 
the depth and truth of Shakspere' s, ñor are they drawn 
so sharply. One reads their plays with pleasure, and 
remembers here and there a passage of fine poetry, or a 
noble or lovely trait, but their characters, as wholes, 
leave a fading impression. Who, even after a single 
reading or representation, ever forgets Falstaff, or Shy- 
lock, or King Lear ? 

The moral inferiority of Beaumont and Fletcher is 
well seen in such a play as "A King and No King." 
Here Arbaces falls in love with his sister, and, after a 
furious conflict in his own mind, finally succumbs to his 
guilty passion. He is rescued from the consequences 
of his vveakness by the discovery that Panthea is not, in 
fact, his sister. But this is to cut the knot and not to 
untie it. It leaves the dénouement to chance, and not 
to those moral forces through which Shakspere always 
wrought his conclusions. Arbaces has failed, and the 
piece of luck which keeps his failure innocent is rejected 
by every right-feeling spectator. In one of John Ford's 
tragedies the situation which in "A King and No King" 
is only apparent becomes real, and incest is boldly made 



Morbid and 

unnatural 

subjects. 



I 



The Age of Milton. 



the subject of the play. Ford pushed the morbid and 
unnatural in character and passion inte even wilder 
extremes than Beaumont and Fletcher. His best play, 
"The Broken Heart," is a prolonged and unrelieved 
torture of the feeUngs. 

Fletcher' s " Faithful Shepherdess" is the best English 
pastoral drama with the exception of Jonson's fragment, 
"The Sad Shepherd." Its choral songs are richly Pastoral and 
and sweetly modulated, and the influence of the whole 
poem upon Milton is very apparent in his "Comus. " 
"The Knight of the Burning Pestle," written by 
Beaumont and Fletcher jointly, was the first burlesque 
comedy in the language, and is excellent fooling. 
Beaumont and Fletcher' s blank verse is musical, but 
less masculine than Marlowe's or Shakspere's, by 
reason of their excessive use of extra syllables and 
feminine endings. 

In John Webster the fondness for abnormal and sen- 
sational themes, which beset the Stuart stage, showed John Webster 

ir • 1 • c 1 •! 1 • 11 •! 1 and the tragedy 

itself m the exaggeration ot the terrible mto the horrible, of horrors. 
Fear, in Shakspere — as in the great murder scene in 
" Macbeth " — is a puré passion ; but in Webster it is 
mingled with something physically repulsive. Thus his 
" Duchess of Malfi" is presented in the dark with a 
dead man's hand, and is told that it is the hand of her 
murdered husband. She is shown a dance of madmen 
and, " behind a traverse, the artificial figures of her 
children, appearing as if dead." Treated in this elabó- 
rate fashion, that ' ' terror ' ' which Aristotle said it was 
ene of the objects of tragedy to move loses half its 
dignity. Webster' s images ha ve the smell of the char- 
nel house about them : 

She would not after the report keep fresh. 
As long as flowers on graves. 



112 Prom Chaucer ío Todivsou. 



We nrt! only likf clrad walls oi v.uilUil graves, 
That, ruinctl, yiclcl no (.clio. 

O tl\is ^;loomy wmUl ! 
In wliat a sliailow oi' (Iccp pil nf daikiicss 
Dolli wi.maiiish and liarfiil niaiiUiml livc ! 

Wc'hsttT liad an intnisi' aiul somlxT nciiliis. In 
(lic-tion he was thc iimst Shakspcriaii of ihe IClizal)cthaii 
(Irainatists, aiul thero are sutUlen j^leanis of beaiity 
amoni;' his darle lu)rrors which lii;lít up a whok* sceiie 
with SDHie ahriipl tmich of feeliiij;. 

Cdvit lirr facf : mine i yi'S tlaz/K' : slu- il'nd yoiiii<;, 

says the brother of the Ducliess, when he has procurcd 
her imirder aiul slaiuls before the corpse. " Vittoria 
Corombona " is tU'scribi-d in thi- o\(\ i-ditioiis as "a 
ni^ht-piece," aiul ¡t sht)uUl, iiuleed, be aiMi-d by thi' 
shiulcK-rini»- Hj^ht of torehes, aml vvitli the cry of the 
screeeh-owl to ininctuate the speeohes. The seiiie of 
Wel)ster's two best traj»edies was laitl, Hke inaiiy of 
l'\)r(rs, Cyril Toiirneur's, anil Bcaumont and Meteher's, 
in llaly — the wicked and splenthd Italy of the Rt>nais- 
sanee, whieh liad such a faseuiation for the I^ii/a- 
bethan iniaj^inatioii. It w.is to them the laiul of the 
Hori^ias and the C'enci ; of faniilies of ])roiul nobles, 
hixurions, cnlti\a(ed, bul íiil! of revengo aml ferocious 
cnnnini; ; sid)tle poisom rs, who killed with a ]ierfnmi'tl 
glove or fau ; paiiieidt-s, atheists, i-onunilters of nn- 
naniable eriines, aml iiwentois of stram;e autl di-lieatc 
varieties of sin. 

Hut a \'ery Ivw have luri' bei'u incMititnieil of the 
j^reat host of dramatisls who kept the theaters busy 
thri>ui;h thc> reij^iis of Elizabeth, James 1., and Charles 
1. The last of the race was James Shirlev, who iliiul in 
i666, aml whose thirty-ei^ht plays were written dnrino^ 
the reii^ii of Charles I. aml the Conimonwealth. 



The Age of ñíHton. 113 



liitlic misci'llancous prosi- aiid poctry of ihis pciiod 
llurc is l;u-k¡ii<- llu" íii'c, (.'Milliiiij, crcatixr impulse uf 'i"''*"¡>smK 
tile vW-\- ^ciu'iation, bul tlicrt' ait> a sohcrcr fcclin^ i'iosc. 
aiul a ci'ilaiii scliolaily clioictMU'ss vvliich comint'ncl 
tliciusi'lxrs lo itM<l(is oí hookish tastfs. ICvcn tliat 
(|iiaiiUius,s of tlioii!L;lil wliiclí is a mark oí thc Coiuinoii- 
ucallli uiiti'is is iiol willioiit ils allraclioii for a iiicc 
liliTary palalr. I'rosc hccaiuc iiovv of j^reatcr rclative 
iniportaiK i' I lian cvcr hifoii-. Aliiiost cvcry clistin- 
jíiiislu'd wiiiti- Iciit liis |)iii to oiu' or iho othor jjarty in 
thc j>ri'at tIicolo^i( al and polilical controvorsy of the 
time. Tlicic wirc íanions tlicolonians, likc Hales, 
Chillin^woi lli, and Üaxlcr ; Iiisloiians anil anti<iuarics, 
likc Sc-ldcn, Knollcs, and Collón; philosophcrs, siich 
as H()1)1ks, i.ord llcilxrl of Clurhury, and More, ihe „ . , 
IMalonist ; and wrilcis in nal mal science — vvliich now "'>>'i>iii 

sciciuc. 

entiTcd npon its modciii, cxpciimental phasc, mider 
thc slimniiis oí Hacon's \vt"ií¡ni;s — amoni; vvliom may 
l)c- mtniioncd Wallis, thc malhcmatician, HoyU-, the 
chcmist, and i iar\c\\ thc discoviacr oí llic ciniilalion 
oí thc l.lood. Thcsc are outsidc oí onr sul)jcct, hnt, in 
thc slriclly litcrary prosc of thc time, ihc same s|)iiil of 
ronscd in(|niiy is maniícst, and thc same disposilion to 
a thoroiiidi and c\haiisti\'c treatmi'nl oí a suhject, 
vvhich is luopci- to thc scicntilic atlitlide oí mind. 

The linc Ixtwecn truc and falso seience, however, liad 
not yet hccii diau n. TIu' ai^^i' was pedantie, and appealcd 
loo mneh lo llu- aulhoiily of anli([nily. Henee we 
have suelí nionumenls of perverso aiul eurious erudition 
as Robert Hurton's " Anatoiny of Melaiicholy," 1621, ...pj^^ 
and Sir Thomas Hrownc's " rseiidodoxia Epidémica," MXndí'oiy^-' 
or " ln(|uiiics into Vnli^ar and Common lírrors," 1646. 
Thc fonncr oí thcsc was the work oí an Oxford scholar, 
an aslrologer, wlio cast liis own lioroscope, and a 



114 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

victim himself of the atrabilious humor, from which he 
soLight relief in listening to the ribaldry of bargemen, 
and in compüing this "Anatomy," in which the 
causes, symptoms, prognostics, and cures of melancholy 
are considered in numerous partitions, sections, mem- 
bers, and sub-sections. The work is a mosaic of 
quotations. All literature is ransacked for anecdotes 
and instances, and the book has thus become a miné of 
out-of-the-way learning in which later writers have 
dug. Laurence Sterne helped himself freely to Bur- 
ton's treasures, and Dr. Johnson said that the "Anat- 
omy" was the only book that ever took him out of 
bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. 

The vulgar and common errors which Sir Thomas 
Browne set himself to refute were such as these : that 
dolphins are crooked, that Jews stink, that a man hath 
one rib less than a woman, that Xerxes's army drank 
up rivers, that cicades are bred out of cuckoo-spittle, 
that Hannibal split Alps with vinegar, together with 
many similar fallacies touching Pope Joan, the Wander- 
ing Jew, the decuman or tenth wave, the blackness of 
negroes, Friar Bacon's brazen head, etc. Another 
book in which great learning and ingenuity were 
applied to trifling ends was the same author's "Carden 
of Cyrus ; or, the Quincuncial Lozenge or Network 
Plantations of the Ancients," in which a mystical mean- 
ing is sought in the occurrence throughout nature and 
art of the figure of the quincunx, or lozenge. 

Browne was a physician of Norwich, where his library, 
museum, aviary, and botanic garden were thought 
worthy of a special visit by the Royal Society. He 
was an antiquary and a naturalist, and deeply read in 
the schoolmen and the Christian fathers. He was a 
mystic, and a writer of a rich and peculiar imagination, 



The Age of Milton. 



115 



whose thoughts have impressed themselves upon many 
kindred minds, like Coleridge, De Quincey, and Emer- 
son. Two of his books belong to literature, ' ' Religio 
Medici," published in 1642, and " Hydriotaphia ; or, 
Urn Burial," 1658, a discourse upon rites of burial and 
incremation, suggested by some Román funeral urns 
dug up in Norfolk. Browne's style, though too highly 
Latinized, is a good example of Commonwealth prose ; 
that stately, cumbrous, brocaded prose which had 
something of the flow and measure of verse, rather 
than the quicker, coUoquial movement of modern 
writing. 

Browne stood aloof from the disputes of his time, 
and in his very subjects there is a calm and medita- 
tive remoteness from the daily interests of men. His 
"Religio Medici" is full of a wise tolerance and a sin- 
gular elevation of feeling. " At the sight of a cross, 
or crucifix, I can dispense with my hat, but scarce 
vvith the thought or memory of my Savior. " " They 
only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith who 
lived before his coming." "They go the fairest way 
to heaven that would serve God without a hell." " AU 
things are artificial, for nature is the art of God." 
The last chapter of the ' ' Urn Burial " is an almost 
rhythmical descant on mortality and oblivion. The 
style kindles slowly into a somber eloquence. It is 
the most impressive and extraordinary passage in the 
prose literature of the time. Browne, like Hamlet, 
loved to " consider too curiously." His subtlety led 
him to "pose his apprehension with those involved 
enigmas and riddles of the Trinity — with incarnation 
and resurrection ' ' ; and to start odd inquiries : ' ' what 
song the syrens sang, or what ñame Achilles assumed 
when he hid himself among women " ; or whether, 



" Religio 
Medici." 



ii6 



Froni Chauccr to Teiinyson. 



after Lazarus was raised from the dead, "bis heir 
might lawfully detain his inheritance." The quaint- 
ness of his phrase appears at every turn. ' ' Charles the 
Fifth can never hope to Uve within two Methuselahs of 
Héctor." " Generations pass while some trees stand, 
and oíd families survive not three oaks." " Mummy 
is become merchandise ; Mizraim cures wounds, and 
Pharaoh is sold for balsams. ' ' 

One of the pleasantest of oíd English humorists is 
Thomas Fuller, who was a chaplain in the roya! army 
during the civil war, and wrote, among other things, a 
" Church History of Britain"; a book of religious 
meditations, " Good Thoughts in Bad Times"; and a 
"character" book, "The Holy and Profane State." 
His most important work, " The Worthies of England," 
was pubüshed in 1662, the year after his death. This 
was a description of every English county ; its natural 
commodities, manufactures, wonders, proverbs, etc., 
vvith brief biographies of its memorable persons. Fuller 
had a well-stored memory, sound piety, and excellent 
common sense. Wit was his leading intellectual trait, 
and the quaintness which he shared with his con- 
temporaries appears in his writings in a fondness for 
puns, droll turns of expression, and bits of eccentric 
suggestion. His prose, unlike Browne's, Milton's, and 
Jeremy Taylor's, is brief, simple, and pithy. His dry 
vein of humor was imitated by the American Cotton 
Mather in his " Magnalia," and by many of the English 
and New England divines of the seventeenth century. 

Jeremy Taylor was also a chaplain in the king's 
army, was several times imprisoned for his opinions, 
and was afterward made, by Charles H., bishop of 
Down and Connor. He is a devotional rather than a 
theological writer, and his " Holy Living" and " Holy 



The Age of Milton. 117 

Dying" are religious classics. Taylor, like Sidney, was 

a " warbler of poetic prose." He has been called the 

prose Spenser, and his English has the opulence, the 

gentle elaboration, the ' ' Hnked svveetness long drawn 

out" of the poet of " The Faerie Queene." In fulness 

and resonance Taylor' s diction resembles that of the 

great orators, though it lacks their nervous energy. 

His pathos is exquisitely tender, and his numerous 

similes ha ve Spenser' s pictorial amplitude. Some of 

them have become commonplaces for admiration, nota- 

bly his description of the flight of the skylark, and the 

sentence in which he compares the gradual awakening 

of the human faculties to the sunrise, which ' ' first 

opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits 

of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calis up the 

lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a 

cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills." Perhaps the 

most impressive single passage of Taylor' s is the open- 

ing chapter in " Holy Dying." From the midst of the -Hoiy Dying.' 

sickening paraphernalia of death which he there accu- 

mula|:es rises that delicate image of the fading rose, one 

of the most perfect things in its wording in all our prose 

literature. 

But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of 
its hood, and at first it was as fair as the morning, and ful! 
with the dew of heaven as a lamb's fleece ; but when a ruder 
breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its 
too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on dark- 
ness and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickiy 
age ; it bowed the head and broke its stalk ; and at night, 
having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the 
portion of weeds and outworn faces. 

With the progress of knowledge and discussion many 
kinds of prose Hterature, which were not absolutely t^b'k[aik^etc 
new, now began to receive wider extensión. Of this 



Ii8 From Chaíicer to Te^inyson. 

sort are the " Letters from Italy " and other miscellanies 
included in the " Reliquiae Wottonianae," the " Re- 
mains" of Sir Henry Wotton, English ambassador at 
Venice in the reign of James I. , and subsequently pro- 
vost of Eton College. Also the ' ' Table Talk "— full of 
incisive remarles — left by John Selden, whom Milton 
pronounced the first scholar of his age, and who was a 
distinguished authority in legal antiquities and Inter- 
national law, furnished notes to Drayton's " Polyol- 
bion," and wrote upon eastern religions and upon the 
Arundel marbles. Literary biography was represented 
by the charming little " Lives " of good oíd Izaak 
Walton, the first edition of whose " Compleat Angler" 
was printed in 1653. The lives were five in number ; 
of Hooker, Wotton, Donne, Herbert, and Sanderson. 
Severa! of these were personal friends of the author, 
and Sir Henry Wotton was a brother of the angle. 
" The Compleat Angler," though not the first piece of 
sporting literature in English, is unquestionably the 
most popular, and still remains a favorite with ' ' all 
that are lovers of virtue, and daré trust in Providence, 
and be quiet, and go a-angling." As in Ascham's 
" Toxophilus," the instruction is conveyed in dialogue 
form, but the technical part of the book is relieved by 
many delightful digressions. Piscator and his friend 
Venator pursue their talk under a honeysuckle hedge 
or a sycamore tree during a passing shower. They 
repair, after the day's fishing, to some honest ale- 
house, with lavender in the window and a score of 
ballads stuck about the wall, where they sing catches — 
" old-fashioned poetry but choicely good " — composed 
by the author or his friends, drink barley wine, and eat 
their trout or chub. They encounter milkmaids, who 
sing to them and give them a draft of the red cow's 



The Age of Milton. 



milk, and they never cease their praises of the angler's 
life, of rural contentment among the cowslip meadows, 
and the quiet streams of Thames, or Lea, or Shawford 
Brook. 

The decay of a great Hterary school is usually sig- 
naUzed by the exaggeration of its characteristic traits. The " meta- 
The manner of the Elizabethan poets was pushed into po^ts. 
mannerism by their successors. That manner, at its 
best, was hardly a simple one, but in the Stuart and 
Commonwealth writers it became mere extravagance. 
Thus Phineas Fletcher — a cousin of the dramatist — 
composed a long Spenserian allegory, ' ' The Purple 
Island," descriptive of the human body. George 
Herbert and others made anagrams and verses shaped 
like an altar, a cross, or a pair of Easter wings. This 
group of poets was named by Dr. Johnson, in his life of 
Cowley, the " metaphysical " school. Other critics have 
preferred to cali them the fantastic or conceited school, 
the later euphuists or the English Marinists and Gon- 
gorists, after the poets Marino and Gongora, who 
brought this fashion to its extreme in Italy and in 
Spain. The English conceptistas were mainly clergy- 
men of the established church : Donne, Herbert, 
Quarles, and Herrick. But Crashaw was a Román 
Catholic, and Vaughan and Cowley were laymen. 

The one who set the fashion was Dr. John Donne, jQj,n Donne. 
Dean of St. Paul's, whom Dryden pronounced a great 
wit but not a great poet, and whom Ben Jonson 
esteemed the best poet in the world for some things, 
but likely to be forgotten for want of being understood. 
Besides satires and epistles in verse, he composed 
amatory poems in his youth and divine poems in his 
age, both kinds distinguished by such subtle obscurity 
and far-fetched ingenuities that they read like a series 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



of puzzles. When this poet has occasion to write a 
valediction to his mistress upon going into France, he 
compares their temporary separation to that of í\ pair of 
compasses : 

Such wilt tliou be to me, \\\\o must, 
Like the other foot, obliquely run ; 

Thy firnuiess niakes niy circle just, 
And inakes me end where I begun. 

If he would persuatle hcr to niarriage he calis her 
attentiou to a Hea — 

l\íe it sucked iirst and now sucks thee, 
And in this Iloa onr two bloods mingled be. 

He says that the flea is their niarriage-temple, and bids 
her forbear to kill it lest she thereby commit niurder, 
suicide, and sacrileqe all in one. Donne's figures are 
scholastic and sniell of the lamp. He ransacked cos- 
mography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, 
and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms 
and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in 
prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, 
parodoxos, the very casuistry antl dialoctics of love or 
devotion. 

Thou canst not every day give me my heart : 
If thou canst give it thcn tliou nover gav'st it : 
Love's riddles aro tiíat thoui;l\ thy heart depart 
It stays at lionie, and thou witli losiiiií sav'st it. 

Donne's verse is usually as uncouth as his thought. 
But there is a real passion slumbering under these ashy 
heaps of conceit, and occasionally a puré flame darts 
up, as in the justly adniired Unes : 

Her puré and eloquent blood 
Spoke in lier cheek, and so divinely wrought 
That one might alniost say her body thought. 



The Age of Milton. i^i 

This description of Doniie is truc, with inodifications, 
of all the metaphysical poets. Tliey liad the same 
forced and unnatural style. The ordinary lavvs of the 
association of ¡deas vvere reversed with them. It was 
not the nearest, but the remotest, association that was 
called up. " Their attempts," said Johnson, "vvere 
ahvays analytic : they broke every image into frag- 
ments." The finest spirit among them was " holy 
George Herbert," whose "Temple" was published in He°berfs 
1633. The titles in this volume were such as the ''-''"p''^- 
following : " Christmas," " Easter," "Good Friday," 
" Holy Haptism," "TheCross," "TheChurch Porch," 
" Church Music," "The Holy Scriptures," " Redemp- 
tion," "Faith," "Doomsday." Ncvcr since, except, 
perhaps, in Kcble's " Christian Year," have the ecclesi- 
astic ideáis of the Anglican Church — the ' ' beauty of 
holiness" — found such sweet expression in poetry. The 
verses entitled " Virtue " — 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 

are known to niost readers, as well as the Une, 

Who sweeps a room as for thy laws makes that and the action 
fine. 

The quaintly named pieces, "The Elixir," "The 
Collar," and "The Pulley," are fuU of deep thought 
and spiritual feeling. But Herbert' s poetry is con- 
stantly disfigured by bad taste. Take this passage from 
" Whitsunday," 

Listen, sweet dove, unto my song^, 

And spread thy golden wings on me, 
Hatching my tender heart so long, 

Till ¡t get wing and fly away with thee, 

which is almost as ludicrous as the epitaph written by 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



RoIíkíous 



his contcmponiry, Carew, on thc daii^htor of Sir 
Thonias Wentworth, whose soul 

. . . grt'w so fast vvithin 
It broke thc outward shell of sin, 
And so was hatched a cherubin. 

Another of these church pocts was Hcnry Vaughan, 
" the Silurist," or Welshman, whose fine piece, "The 
Rotroat," has bcon ofton coniparod with Wordsworth's 
^ '"'■'^'''"'" "Olio on thc Intimations of InunortaUty." Francos 

(Juarlcs's " Divine Eniblenis " loni^ remained a favorite 
book with rchgious readers both in Oíd and New 
Kni^land. Emblem books, in which engravini^s of a 
fijiurative design were accompanied with explanatory 
letter-press in verse, were a popular class of literature in 
the seventeenth century. The most fanious of them all 
were Jacob Catt's Dutch cmblcnis. 

One of the most dclightful of the Enolish lyric poets 
R,,,„.,i is Robert Herrick, whose " Hesperides," 1648, has 

latcly received such sympathetic illustration from the 
pencil of an American artist, Mr. E. A. Abbey. 
Herrick was a clergyman of the English Church and 
was expelled by the Puritans from his li\ing, the 
vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. The most 
quotod of his religious poems is, " How to Keep a True 
Lent. ' ' But it may be doubted whether his tastes were 
prevailiníjly clerical ; his poctry certainly was not. He 
was a disciple of Ben Jonson, anil his boon comixuiion 
at 

. . . tliosc lyric toasts 

Mado at tho Sun, 

The Ooí;, the Triple Tun ; 

Where we such clustets liad 

As iiiaile US nobly wild, uot niad. 

And yet each verse of thine, 

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine. 



Herrick. 



The Age of Milton. 123 

Hcrrick's " Noble Numbers " seldom risos abovc the 
exprcssion of a cheerful gratitude and contcntmcnt. 
He had not the subtlety and elevation of Herbcrt, but 
he surpassed him ¡n the grace, mclody, sensuous 
beauty, and fresh lyrical impulse of his verse. The 
conceits of the metaphysical school appear in Hcrrick 
only in the form of an occasional pretty quaintncss. 
He is the poct of EngHsh parish fostivals and of Eng- 
hsh ílowers, the primrose, the white thorn, the danodil. 
He sang the praiscs of the country Ufo, love songs to 
"Julia," and hynins of thanksgiving for simple bloss- 
ings. He has been called the English CatuUus, but he 
strikes rather the Horatian note of carpe dicm and 
regret at the shortness of life and youth in many of his 
best-known poems, such as " Gather ye rose-buds while 
ye may " and "To Corinna, to go a-Maying." 

Richard Crashaw was a Cambridge scholar vvho was 
turned out of his fellowship at Peterhouse by the pogt*'^°"*^ 
Puritans in 1644, for refusing to subscribe the Solemn 
League and Covenant ; became a Román Catholic, and 
died in 1650 as a canon of the Virgin' s Chape! at 
Loretto. He is best known to the general reader by his 
"Wishes for his Unknown Mistress," 

Th.'it not impossible she, 

which is includod in most of the anthologies. His 
religious pootry expresscs a rapt and mystical picty, 
fed on the ecstatic visions of St. Theresa, " undauntcd 
daugiiter of desires," who is the subject of a splondid 
apostrophe in his poem, "The Flaming Hoart." 
Crashaw is, in fact, a poet of passages and of single 
lines, his vvork being exceedingly uneven and disfigured 
by tasteless conceits. In one of his Latin epigrams 
occurs the celebrated line upen the mirado at Cana : 



124 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Cowley. 



The cavaliers. 



Suckling. 



Vidit et erubuit nympha púdica Deum : 
as Englished by Dryden, 

The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed. 

Abraham Cowley is now less remembered for his 
poetry than for his pleasant volume of essays, published 
after the Restoration ; but he was thought in his own 
time a better poet than Milton. His coUection of love 
songs — "The Mistress" — is a mass of cold conceits, in 
the metaphysical manner ; but his elegies on Crashaw 
and Harvey have much dignity and natural feeling. 
He introduced the Pindaric ode into English, and wrote 
an epic poem on a biblical subject — " The Davideis" — 
now quite unreadable. Cowley was a royalist, and 
followed the exiled court to France, 

Side by side with the church poets were the cavaliers 
— Carew, Waller, Lovelace, Suckling, L'Estrange, and 
others — ^gallant courtiers and officers in the royal army, 
who mingled love and loyalty in their strains. Colonel 
Richard Lovelace, who lost everything in the king's 
service and was several times imprisoned, wrote two 
famous songs — " To Lucasta on Going to the Wars " — 
in which occur the lines, 

I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honor more — 

and "To Althaea from Prison," in which he sings "the 
sweetness, mercy, majesty, and glories" of his king, 
and declares that 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Ñor iron bars a cage. 

Another of the cavaliers was Sir John Suckling, who 
formed a plot to rescue the Earl of Strafford, raised a 
troop of horse for Charles I., was impeached by the 



The Age of Milton. 125 

Parliament, and fled to France. He was a man of wit 
and pleasure, who penned a number of gay trifles, but 
has been saved from oblivion chiefly by his exquisita 
"Bailad upon a Wedding." Thomas Carew and Ed- 
mund Waller were poets of the same stamp — graceful 
and easy, but shallow in feeling. Carew, however, Carew. 
showed a nicer sense of form than most of the fantas- 
tic school. Some of his love songs are written with 
delicate art. There are noble lines in his elegy on 
Donne and in one passage of his masque " Coelum 
Britannicum." In his poem entitled " The Rapture " 
great splendor of language and imagery is devoted to 
the service of an unbridled sensuality. Waller, who waiier. 
followed the court to Paris, was the author of two songs 
which are still favorites, " Go, Lovely Rose" and " On 
a Girdle," and he first introduced the smooth, correct 
manner of writing in couplets, which Dryden and Pope 
carried to perfection. Gallantry rather than love was 
the inspiration of these courtly singers. In such verses 
as Carew' s " Encouragements to a Lover " and George 
Wither's "The Manly Heart " — 

If she be not so to me, 

What cara I how fair she be ? — 

we see the revolt against the high, passionate, Sidneian 
love of the Elizabethan sonneteers, and the note of 
persiflage that was to mark the lyrical verse of the 
Restoration. But the poetry of the cavaliers reached 
its high-water mark in one fiery-hearted song by the 
noble and unfortunate James Graham, Marquis of Mont- 
rose, who invaded Scotland in the interest of Charles 
II., and was taken prisoner and put to death at Edin- 
burgh in 1650. 

My dear and only love, I pray 
That little world of thee 



126 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

He jíoverned by no other sway 
Thaii purest monarchy. 

In lan.miat^o l)orrowed from the politics of the time, he 
cautions his mistress against synods or committees \\\ hcr 
heart ; swears to malee her glorious by his pcn aiul 
famous by his sword ; and, vvith that fine recklessness 
wliich distinguislied the dashing troopcrs of Prince Ru- 
pert, he adds, in vvords that have been often quoted, 

He either fears his fate too much, 

Or his cleserts are small, 
That daros not put it to the touch 

To gain or lose ¡t all. 

John Milton, the greatest English jioet exccpt Shak- 
john Miiton. spere, vvas born in London in 1608. His father was a 
scrivencr, an educated man, and a musical composer of 
sonie merit. At his honie Milton was surrounded vvith 
all the inlluences of a refined and vvell-ordercd Puritan 
household of the better class. He inherited his father* s 
musical tastes, and during the latter part of his life he 
spent a part of evcry afternoon in playing the organ. 
No poet has vvritten more beautifully of music than Mil- 
ton. One of his sonnets was addressed to Henry Lawes, 
the composer, who wrote the airs to the songs in 
"Comus." Milton's education was niost carcful and 
thorough. He spent sevcn years at Cambritlge, where, 
from his personal beauty and faslitlious habits, he was 
callod "The Lady of Christ's." At Horton, in Buck- 
inghamshire, where his father had a country seat, he 
passed five years more, perfecting himself in his studies, 
and then travcled for fiftecn months, mainly in Italy, 
visiting Naples antl Rome, but residing at Florence. 
Hcre he saw Galilco, a prisoner of the Inquisition " for 
thinking otherwise in astronomy than his Dominican 
and I'ranciscan licensers thought." 



The Age of Milton. 127 

Milton was the most scholarly and the most truly 
classical of English poets. His Latin verse, for elegance h¡s culture. 
and correctness, ranks with Addison's ; and his Italian 
poems were the admiration of the Tuscan scholars. But 
his learning appears in his poetry only in the form of a 
fine and chastened result, and not in laborious allusion 
and pedantic citation, as too often in Ben Jonson, for 
instance. " My father, " he wrote, "destined me, while 
yet a httle child, for the study of humane letters." He 
was also destined for the ministry, but, ' ' coming to 
some maturity of years and perceiving what tyranny 
had invaded the church, ... I thought it better 
to prefer a blameless silence, before the sacred office of 
speaking, bought and begun with servitude and for- 
swearing." Other hands than a bishop's were laid 
upon his head. ' ' He who would not be frústrate of his 
hope to write well hereafter," he says, " ought himself 
to be a true poem. ' ' And he adds that his ' ' natural 
haughtiness * ' saved him from all impurity of living. 
Milton had a sublime self-respect. The dignity and 
earnestness of the Puritan gentleman blended in his 
training with the culture of the Renaissance. Born 
into an age of spiritual conflict, he dedicated his gift to 
the service of Heaven, and he became, like Heine, a 
valiant soldier in the war for liberation. He was the 
poet of a cause, and his song was keyed to 

the Dorian mood 
Of flotes and soft recorders, such as raised 
To height of noblest temper héroes oíd 
Arming to battle. 

On comparing Milton with Shakspere, with his uni- 
versal sympathies and receptive imagination, one per- 
ceives a loss in breadth, but a gain in intense personal 
conviction. He introduced a new note into English 



128 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Early poems. 



' Comus. 



poetry : the passion for truth and the feeling of re- 
ligious sublimity. Milton's was an heroic age, and its 
song niust be lyric rather than dramatic ; its singer 
must be in the fight and of it. 

Of the verses which he wrote at Cambridge the most 
important was his splendid ode " On the Morning of 
Christ's Nativity." At Horton he wrote, among other 
things, the companion pieces, "L' Allegro" and "II 
Penseroso," of a kind quite new in English, giving to 
the landscape an expression in harmony with the two 
contrasted moods. "Comus," which belongs to the 
same period, was the perfection of the Elizabethan 
court masque, and was presentad at Ludlow Castle in 
1634, on the occasion of the installation of the Earl of 
Bridgewater as lord president of Wales. Under the 
guise of a skilful addition to the Homeric allegory of 
Circe, with her cup of enchantment, it was a Puritan 
song in praise of chastity and temperance. "Lycidas," 
in like manner, was the perfection of the Elizabethan 
pastoral elegy. It was contributed to a volume of 
memorial verses on the death of Edward King, a Cam- 
bridge friend of Milton's who was drowned in the Irish 
Channel in 1637. In one stern strain, which is put 
into the mouth of St. Peter, the author " foretells the 
ruin of our corrupted clergy, then at their height." 



' Lycidas.' 



Rut that two-handed engine at the door 
Stands ready to smite once and smite no more. 

This was Milton's last utterance in English verse before 
the outbreak of the civil war, and it sounds the alarm of 
the inipending struggle. In technical quality ' ' Lycidas ' ' 
is the most wonderful of all Milton's poems. The cun- 
ningly intricate harmony of the verse, the pressed and 
packed language, with its fulness of meaning and allu- 



The Age of Milton. 129 

sion, make it worthy of the minutest study. In these 
early poems, Milton, merely as a poet, is at his best, 
Something of the Elizabethan style still clings to them ; 
but their grave sweetness, their choice wording, their 
originality in epithet, ñame, and phrase, were novelties 
of Milton' s own. His English masters were Spenser, 
Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas's 
" La Semaine " ; but nothing of Spenser' s prolixity, or 
Fletcher' s effeminacy, or Sylvester' s quaintness is 
found in Milton' s puré, energetic diction. He in- 
herited their beauties, but his taste had been tempered 
to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew 
poetry. He was the last of the Elizabethans, and his 
style was at once the crown of the oíd and a departure 
into the new. In masque, elegy, and sonnet he set the 
seal to the Elizabethan poetry, said the last word, and 
closed one great literary era. 

In 1639 the breach between Charles I. and his Parlia- 
ment brought Milton back from Italy. "I thought it controversiai 
base to be traveling at my ease for amusement while 
my fellow-countrymen at home were fighting for 
liberty." For the next twenty years he threw himself 
into the contest, and poured forth a succession of tracts, 
in English and Latin, upon the various public questions 
at issue. As a political thinker, Milton had what Bacon 
calis "the humor of a scholar. " In a country of 
endowed grammar schools and universities hardly 
emerged from a medieval discipline and curriculum, he 
wanted to set up Greek gymnasia and philosoi)hical 
schools, after the fashion of the Porch and the Acad- 
emy. He would have imposed an Athenian democracy 
upon a people trained in the traditions of monarchy and 
episcopacy. At the very moment when England had 
grown tired of the Protectorate and was preparing to 



wntings. 



130 From Chaucer io Tennyson. 



welcome back the Stuarts, he vvas writing ' ' An Easy 
and Ready Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth." 
Milton acknovvledged that in prose he had the use of 
his left hand only. There are passages of fervid elo- 
quence, where the style swells into a kind of lofty 
chant, with a rhythmical rise and fall to it, as in parts of 
the English Book of Comnion Prayer. But in general 
his sentences are long and involved, full of inversions 
and Latinized constructions. Controversy at that day 
was conducted on schokistic Hnes. Each disputant, 
instead of appeahng at once to the arguments of ex- 
pedicncy and common sense, began with a formidable 
display of learning, ransacking Greek and Latin authors 
and the fathers of the church for opinions in support of 
his own position. These authorities he deployed at 
tedious length, and foUowed them up with heavy 
scurrilities and "excusations," by way of attack and 
defense. The dispute between Milton and Salmasius 
over the execution of Charles I. was like a duel be- 
tween two knights in full armor striking at each other 
with ponderous maces. The vcry titles of these pani- 
jihlets are enough to frighten ofí a modern reader : "A 
Confutation of the Animadversions upon a Defense of a 
Humble Remonstrance against a Treatise, entitled Of 
Reformation." The most interesting of Milton's prose 
tracts is his " Arcopagitica : A Speech for the Liberty 
of Unlicensed Printing," 1644. The arguments in this 
are of permancnt forcé ; but if the reader will compare 
it, or Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying," with 
Locke's " Letters on Toleration," he will see how 
much clearer and more convincing is the modern 
method of discussion, introduced by writers like Hobbes 
and Locke and Dryden. 

Under the Protectorate Milton was appointcd Latin 



The Age of Milton. 131 

secretary to the Council of State. In thc diplomatic 

corrc-spondence which was lüs official duty, and in the 

composition of his tract, " Defensio pro Popululo 

Anglicano," he overtaxed his eyes, and in 1654 be- 

came totally bUnd. The only poetry of Milton' s be- 

longinc^ to the years 1640-60 are a few sonnets of the Thesonnets. 

puré Itahan form, mainly called forth by pubUc occa- 

sions, By the EHzabethans the sonnet had been used 

mainly in love poetry. In Milton's hands, said Words- 

worth, "the thing became a trunipet. " Some of his 

were addressed to political leaders, like Fairfax, Crom- 

well, and Sir Henry Vane ; and of these the best is, 

perhaps, the sonnet written on the niassacre of the 

Vaudois Protestants — "a collect in verse," it has been 

called — which has the fire of á Hebrew prophet in- 

voking the divine wrath upon the oppressors of Israel. 

Two were on his own blindness, and in these there is 

not one selfish repining, but only a regret that the valué 

of his service is impaired — 

Will God exact day labor, light denied ? 

After the restoration of the Stuarts, in 1660, Milton 
was for a while in peril, by reason of the part that he 
had taken against the king. But 

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues 
In darkness and with dangers compassed round 
And solitude, 

he bated no jot of heart or hope. Henceforth he be- 
comes the most heroic and affecting figure in English 
literary history. Years before he had planned an epic 
poem on the subject of King Arthur, and again a 
sacred tragedy on man's fall and redemption. These 
experiments finally took shape in " Paradise Lost," "Paradise 
which was given to the world in 1667. This is the epic 



132 From Chaucer to Teyuíyson. 

of English Puritanism and of Protestant Christianity. 
It was Milton's purpose to 

assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men, 

or, in other words, to embody his theological system in 
verse, This gives a doctrinal rigidity and even dryness 
to parts of the ' ' Paradise Lost ' ' which injure its 
effect as a poem. His "God the father turns a school 
divine": his Christ, as has been wittily said, is "God's 
good boy": the discourses of Raphael to Adam are 
scholastic lectures : Adam himself is too sophisticated 
for the State of innocence, and Eve is somewhat insipid. 
The real protagonist of the poem is Satán, upon whose 
mighty figure Milton unconsciously bestowed some- 
thing of his own nature, and whose words of defiance 
might almost have come from some Republican leader 
when the Good Oíd Cause went down. 

What though the field be lost ? 
AU is not lost ; the unconquerable will 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield. 

But when all has been said that can be said in dis- 
paragement or qualification, "Paradise Lost" remains 
the foremost of English poems and the sublimest of all 
epics. Even in those parts where theology encroaches 
most upon poetry, the diction, though often heavy, is 
never languid. Milton's blank verse in itself is enough 
to bear up the most prosaic theme, and so is his epic 
English, a style more massive and splendid than Shak- 
spere's, and comparable, like TertuUian's Latin, to a 
river of molten gold. Of the countless single beauties 
that sow his page 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
In Vallombrosa. 



The Age of Milton. 133 

there is no room to speak, ñor of the astonishing fulness 
of substance and multitude of thoughts which have 
caused the " Paradise Lost " to be called the book of 
universal knowledge. "The heat of Milton's mind," 
said Dr. Johnson, " might be said to subHmate his 
learning and throvv off into his work the spirit of 
Science, unmingled with its grosser parts. ' ' The truth 
of this remark is clearly seen upon a comparison of 
Milton's description of the creation, for example, with 
corresponding passages in Sylvester's " Divine Weeks 
and Works" (translated from the Huguenot poet Du 
Bartas), which was, in some sense, his original. 

But the most heroic thing in Milton's heroic poem is 
Milton. There are no strains in "Paradise Lost" so Milton's 

heroic 

absorbing as those in which the poet breaks the strict personaiity. 
epic bounds and speaks directly of himself, as in the 
majestic lament over his own blindness, and in the invo- 
cation to Urania, which open the third and seventh 
books. Everywhere, too, one reads between the lines. 
We think of the dissolute cavaliers, as Milton himself 
undoubtedly was thinking of them, when we read of 
"the sons of Belial flown with insolence and wine," or 
when the Puritan turns among the sweet landscapes of 
Edén, to denounce 

court amours, 
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, 
Or serenade which the starved lover sings 
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. 

And we think of Milton among the triumphant royalists 
when we read of the seraph Abdiel ' ' faithful found 
among the faithless." 

Ñor number ñor example with him wrought 

To swerve from truth or change his constant mind, 

Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, 



134 



From Chaiicer to Tennysoji. 



Long way through hostile scorn which he sustained 

Superior, ñor of violence feared aught : 

And with retorted scorn his back he turned 

On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed. 

' ' Paradise Regained ' ' and ' ' Samson Agonistes ' ' were 
published in 1671. The first of these treated in four 
books Christ's temptation in the wilderness, a subject 
that liad already been handled in the Spenserian 
allegorical manner by Giles Fletcher, a brother of the 
Purple Islander, in his "Christ's Victory and Tri- 
umph," 1610. The superiority of " Paradise Lost " to 
its sequel is not without significance. The Puritans 
were Oíd Testament men. Their God was the Hebrew 
Jehovah, whose single divinity the Catholic mythology 
had overlaid with the figures of the Son, the Virgin 
Mary, and the saints. They identified themselves in 
thought with his chosen people, with the militant 
theocracy of the Jews. Their sword was the sword of 
the Lord and of Gideon. " To your tents, O Israel," 
was the cry of ,the London mob when the bishops were 
committed to the Tower. And when the fog lifted, on 
the morning of the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell ex- 
claimed, ' ' Let God arise and let his enemies be scat- 
tered : like as the sun riseth, so shalt thou drive them 
away. ' ' 

' ' Samson Agonistes, ' ' though Hebrew in theme and 
spirit, was in form a Greek tragedy. It had chorus and 
semi-chorus, and preserved the so-called dramatic uni- 
ties ; that is, the scene was unchanged, and there were 
no intervals of time between the acts. In accordance 
with the rules of the Greek theater, but two speakers 
appeared upon the stage at once, and there was no 
violent action. The death of Samson was related by a 
messenger. Milton's reason for the choice of this 



The Age of Milton. 135 

subject is obvious. He himself was Samson, shorn of 
his strength, blind, and alone among enemies ; given 
over 

to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, 
And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude. 

As Milton grew older he discarded more and more increasing 
the graces of poetry, and relied purely upon the struc- styi""^ °^ 
ture and the thought. In " Paradise Lost," although 
there is little resemblance to Elizabethan work — such 
as one notices in " Comus " and the Christmas hymn — 
yet the style is rich, especially in the earlier books. 
But in ' ' Paradise Regained " it is severe to bareness, 
and in "Samson," even to ruggedness. Like Michel- 
angelo, with whose genius he had much in common, 
Milton became impatient of finish or of mere beauty. 
He blocked out his work in masses, left rough places 
and surfaces not fiUed in, and inclined to express his 
meaning by a symbol, rather than work it out in detall. 
It was a part of his austerity, his increasing preference 
for structural over decorative methods, to give up rime 
for blank verse. His latest poem, "Samson Agon- 
istes," is a metrical study of the highest interest. 

Milton was not quite alone among the poets of his 
time in espousing the popular cause. Andrew Marvell, ^"^""T 
who was his assistant in the Latin secretaryship and sat 
in Parliament for HuU after the Restoration, was a good 
Republican, and wrote a fine " Horatian Ode upon 
Cromwell's Return from Ireland." There is also a rare 
imaginative quality in his " Song of the Exiles in 
Bermuda," " Thoughts in a Carden," and "The Girl 
Describes her Fawn." George Wither, who was im- 
prisoned for his satires, also took the side of the Parlia- 
ment, but there is little that is distinctively Puritan in 
his poetry. 



136 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

1. MiLTON : " Poetical Works." Edited by David 
Masson. 3 vols. London : 1882. 

2. " Selections from Milton's Prose." Edited by F. 
D. Myers. New York : 1883. 

3. George Macdonald : " England's Antiphon." 
London : 1868. 

4. RoBERT Herrick : " Hesperides." London: 
1885. 

5. SiR Thomas Browne : " Religio Medid" and 
" Hydriotaphia. " Edited by Willis Bund. London: 

1873- 

6. Thomas Fuller : " Good Thoughts in Bad 
Times." Boston: 1863. 

7. Walton : "Compleat Angler." Edited by Sir 
Harris Nicolás. London : 1875. 

8. " English Prose Selections." Edited by Henry 
Craik. Vol. II. New York : 1894. 

9. " The English Poets. " Edited by T. H. Ward. 
Vol. II. New York : 1893. 

10. Beaumont and Fletcher: " Philaster " ; 
Ford: "The Broken Heart"; Webster: "Vittoria 
Corombona ' ' ; Mermaid Series of Oíd Dramatists. 



CHAPTER V. 

FrOM THE ReSTORATION TO THE DeATH OF PoPE, 

1660-1744. 

The Stuart Restoration was a period of descent from 
poetry to prose, from passion and imagination to wit Prosaic spirit 
and the understanding. The serious, exalted mood of tion. 
the civil war and Commonwealth had spent itself and 
issued in disillusion. There followed a generation of 
wits, logical, skeptical, and prosaic, without earnest- 
ness, as without principie. The characteristic litera- 
ture of such a time is criticism, satire, and burlesque, 
and such, indeed, continued to be the course of English 
literary history for a century after the return of the 
Stuarts. The age was not a stupid one, but one of 
active inquiry. The Royal Society, for the cultivation of 
the natural sciences, was founded in 1662. There were 
able divines in the pulpit and at the universities — 
Barrow, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, South, and others ; 
scholars, like Bentley ; historians, like Clarendon and 
Burnet ; scientists, like Boyle and Newton ; philoso- 
phers, like Hobbes and Locke, But of poetry, in any 
high sense of the word, there was little between the 
time of Milton and the time of Goldsmith and Gray. 

The English writers of this period were strongly in- 
fluenced by the contemporary literature of France, by ^^c"!^^ '"^"" 
the comedies of Moliere, the tragedies of Corneille and 
Racine, and the satires, epistles, and versified essays of 
Boileau. Many of the Restoration writers — Waller, 
Cowley, Davenant, Wycherley, Villiers, and others — 
137 



138 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

had becn in France during the exile, and brought back 
with them French tastes. John Dryden (1631-1700), 
who is the great literary figure of his generation, has 
been called the first of the moderns. From the reign of 
Charles II., indeed, we may date the beginnings of 
chaiiKesin niodem English life. What we cali "society" was 

social life. ° 1 ^ rr 1 • 1 

forming, the tovvn, the London world. " Coffee, which 
makes the pohtician wise," had just been introduced, 
and the ordinaries of Ben Jonson's time gave vvay to 
coffee-houses, like Will's and Button's, which became 
the headquarters of hterary and political gossip. The 
two great English parties, as we know them to-day, 
were organized : the words Whig and Tory date from 
this reign. French etiquette and fashions carne in, and 
French phrases of convenience — such as coup de grace, 
bel esprit, etc. — began to appear in English prose. 
Literature became intensely urban and partisan. It 
reflected city life, the disputes of faction, and the per- 
sonal quarrels of authors. The politics of the great 
rebellion had been of heroic proportions, and found 
fitting expression in song. But in the Revolution of 
1688 the issues were constitutional and to be settled by 
the arguments of lawyers. Measures were in question 
rather than principies, and there was little inspiration to 
the poet in Exclusión Bills and Acts of Setdement. 
Court and society, in the reign of Charles II. and 
Pepys's James II., were shockingly dissolute, and in literature, 

" ^'"y-" as in life, the reaction against Puritanism went to great 

extremes. The social life of the time is faithfuUy re- 
flected in the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was a 
simple-minded man, the son of a London tailor, and 
became, himself, secretary to the admiralty. His diary 
was kept in cipher, and publishcd only in 1825. Being 
written for his own eye, it is singularly outspoken ; and 



From the Restoration to the Death of Pope. 139 

its naive, gossipy, confidcntial tone malees ¡t a most 
diverting book, as it is, historically, a most valuable 
onc. 

Pcrhaps the most popular book of its time was 
Samuel Butler's "Hudibras" (1663-64-78), a burlesque S"pl'u^^;f,ras. 
romance ¡n ridicule of the Puritans. The king carried 
a copy of it in his pocket, and Pepys testifies that it 
was quoted and praiscd on all sides. Ridicule of the 
Puritans was nothing new. Zeal-of-the-land Busy, in 
Ben Jonson's " Bartholomcvv Fair," is an early in- 
stance of the kind. Thcrc was nothing laughable 
about the earnestness of men like Cromwell, Milton, 
Algernon Sidney, and Sir Henry Vane. But even the 
French Revolution had its humors ; and as the English 
Puritan Revolution gathcrcd head and the extremer 
sectarios pressed to the front — Quakers, New Lights, 
Fifth Monarchy Men, Ranters, etc. — its grotesque sides 
canie uppermost. Butler's hero is a Presbyterian 
justice of the peace who sallies forth with his secretary, 
Ralpho — an Independent and Anabaptist — like Don 
Quixote with Sancho Panza, to suppress May games 
and bear-baitings. (Macaulay, it will be remembered, 
said that the Puritans disapproved of bear-baiting, not 
because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave 
pleasure to the spectators.) The humor of "Hudi- 
bras" is not of the finest. The knight and the squire 
are discomfited in broadly comic adventures, hardly 
removed from the rough physical droUeries of a panto- 
mime or circus. The deep heart-laughter of Cervantes, 
the pathos on which his humor rests, is, of course, not 
to be lookcd for in Butler. But he had wit of a 
sharp, logical kind, and his style surprises with all 
manncr of verbal antics. He is almost as great a 
phrase-master as Pope, though in a coarser kind. His 



The d 

the 



140 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

verse is a smart dogg-erel, and his poem has furnished 
many stock sayings, as, for example, 

'Tis strange what difference there can be 
'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. 

"Hudibras" has had many imitators, not the least 
successful of whom was the American John TrumbuU, 
in his revokitionary satire, " McFingal," some couplets 
of which are generally quoted as Butler's, as, for ex- 
ample, 

No man e'er fclt the halter draw 
With good opinión of tlie lavv. 

The rebound against Puritanism is seen no less 
rama phiinly in the drama of the Restoration, and the stage 
Resioratioti. now took vengeance for its enforced silence under the 
Protectorate. Two theaters were opened under the 
patronage, respectively, of the king and of his brother, 
the Duke of York. The manager of the latter, Sir 
William Davenant — who had fought on the king's side, 
been knighted for his services, escaped to France, and 
was afterward captured and imprisoned in England for 
two years — had managcd to evade the law against 
stage plays as early as 1656, by presenting his " Siege 
of Rhodes" as an "opera," with instrumental musió 
and dialogue in recitative, after a fashion newly sprung 
up in Italy. This he brought out again in 1661, with 
the dialogue recast into riming couplets in the French 
fashion. Movable painted scenery was now introduced 
from France, and actresses took the female parts 
formerly played by boys. This last innovation was 
said to be at the request of the king, one of whose 
mistresses, the famous Nell Gwynne, was the favorite 
actress at the King's Theater. 

Upon the stage, thus reconstructed, the so-called 



Introduction of 
classical rules. 



From the Restoration to the Death of Pope. 141 

"classical" rules of the French theater vvere followed, 
at least in theory. The Louis XIV. writers were not 
pLirely creativa, like Shakspere or his contemporaries in 
England, but critical and self-conscious. The Academy 
had been formed in 1636 for the preservation of the 
purity of the French language, and discussion abounded 
on the principies and methods of literary art. Cor- 
neille not only wrote tragedles, but essays on tragedy, 
and one in particular on "The Three Unities." Dry- 
den followed his example in his " Essay of Dramatic 
Poesie " (1667), in vvhich he treated of the unities and 
argued for the use of rime in tragedy in preference to 
blank verse. His own practice varied. Most of his 
tragedles were written in rime, but in the best of them, 
"AU for Love," founded on Shakspere's "Antony and 
Cleopatra," he returned to blank verse. 

One of the principies of the classical school was to 
keep comedy and tragedy distinct. The tragic drama- 
tists of the Restoration, Dryden, Howard, Settle, 
Crowne, Lee, and others, composed what they called 
"heroic plays," such as "The Indian Emperor, " "The "Heroic 
Conquest of Granada," "The Duke of Lerma," "The ^^^ ' 
Empress of Morocco," "The Destruction of Jerusa- 
lem," "Ñero," and " The Rival Queens." The titles 
of these pieces indícate their character. Their héroes 
were great historie personages. Subject and treatment 
were alike remote from nature and real life. The 
diction was stilted and artificial, and pompous declama- 
tion took the place of action and genuine passion. The 
tragedles of Racine seem chill to an Englishman 
brought up on Shakspere, but to see how great an 
artist Racine was, in his own somewhat narrow way, 
one has but to compare his "Phedre," or " Iphigenie," 
with Dryden' s ranting tragedy of "Tyrannic Love." 



142 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



"The 
Rcliearsal. 



Borrowings 
from tlie 
French. 



Dryden's 
plays. 



These bombastic heroic plays were made the subject of 
a capital burlesque, "The Rehearsal," by George 
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, acted in 1671 at the 
King's Theater. 

Tlie ¡ndebtedness of the English stage to the French 
did not stop with a general adoption of its dramatic 
mcthods, but extended to direct imitation and transla- 
tion. Dryden's comedy, " An Evening's Love," vvas 
adaptcd from Thomas Corneille's "Le Feint Astro- 
logue," and his " Sir Martin Mar-all," from Moliere' s 
"L'Etourdi." Shadwell borrowed his "Miser" from 
Moliere, and Otway made versions of Racine's " Béré- 
nice" and Moliere' s "Fourberies de Scapin." Wych- 
erley's " Country Wife " and " Plain Dealer," although 
not translations, were based, in a sense, upon Moliere' s 
"Ecole des Femmes" and "Le Misanthrope." The 
only one of the tragic dramatists of the Restoration 
who prolonged the traditions of the Elizabethan stage 
was Otway, whose "Venice Preserved," written in 
blank verse, still keeps the boards. There are fine 
passages in Dryden's heroic plays, passages weighty in 
thought and nobly sonorous in language. There is 
one great scene (between Antony and Ventidius) in his 
"AU for Love." And one, at least, of his comedies, 
"The Spanish Friar," is skilfully constructed. But 
his nature was not pliable enough for the drama, and he 
acknowledged that, in writing for the stage, he ' ' forced 
his genius." 

In sharp contrast with these heroic plays was the 
comic drama of the Restoration, the plays of Wycher- 
ley, Killigrew, Etherege, Farquhar, Van Brugh, Con- 
greve, and others ; plays like "The Country Wife," 
' ' The Parson' s Wedding, " " She Would if She Could, ' ' 
"The Beaux' Stratagem," "The Relapse," and "The 



From ihe Restoration to the Deaih of Pope. 143 

Way of the World." These were in prose, and repre- 
sented the gay world and the surface of fashionable life. fg'^^'^J^''"" 
Amorous intrigue was their constantly recurring theme. 
Some of them were written expressly in ridicule of the 
Puritans. Such was "The Committee " of Dryden's 
brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard, the hero of which 
is a distressed gentleman, and the villain a London cit, 
and president of the committee appointed by ParHament 
to sit upon the sequestration of the estates of royaHsts. 
Such were also "The Roundheads" and "The Ban- 
ished Cavaliers" of Mrs. Aphra Behn, who was a 
female spy in the service of Charles II., at Antwerp, 
and one of the coarsest of the Restoration comedians. 
The profession of piety had become so disagreeable 
that a shameless cynicism was now considered the mark its profligacy. 
of a gentleman. The ideal hero of Wycherley or 
Etherege was the witty young profligate who had seen 
life and learned to disbelieve in virtue. His highest 
qualities were a contempt for cant, physical courage, a 
sort of spendthrift generosity, and a good-natured 
readiness to back up a friend in a quarrel or an amour. 
Virtue was bourgeois — reserved for London trades- 
people. A man must be either a rake or a hypocrite. 
The gentlemen were rakes, the city people were hypo- 
crites. Their wives, however, were all in love with the 
gentlemen, and it was the proper thing to seduce them 
and to borrow their husbands' money. For the first 
and last time, perhaps, in the history of the English 
drama, the sympathy of the audience was deliberately 
sought for the seducer and the rogue, and the laugh 
turned against the dishonored husband and the honest 
man. (Contrast this with Shakspere's " Merry Wives 
ofWindsor. ") The women were represented as worse 
than the men — scheming, ignorant, and corrupt. The 



144 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



A ii-ncrtií 
>iUciniioi 



dialogue in the bcst of these plays was easy, lively, and 
witty ; the situations in some of them audacious almost 
beyond belief. Under a thin varnish of good breeding, 
the sentiments and manners were really brutal, The 
loosest gallants of Beaumont and Fletcher's theater 
retain a fineness of feeling and that politcsse de cceur 
whicii marks the gentleman. They are poetic creatures, 
and own a capacity for romantic passion. But the 
Manlys and Horncrs of the Restoration comedy have a 
prosaic, cold-bloodcd profligacy that disgusta. 

Charles Lamb, in his ingenious essay on "The Arti- 
ficial Comedy of the Last Century," apologized for the 
society." ' Restoration stage, on the ground that it represented a 
world of whim and unrcality in which the ordinary lavvs 
of morality had no application. But Macaulay answered 
truly, that at no time has the stage been closer in its 
imitation of real life. The theater of Wycherley and 
Etherege was but the counterpart of that social con- 
dition which we read of in Pepys's " Diary " and in the 
" Memoirs" of the Chevalier de Grammont. This prosa 
comedy of manners was not, indeed, "artificial" at all, 
in the sense in which the contemporary tragedy — the 
"heroic play" — was artificial. It was, on the contrary, 
far more natural, and intellectually of niuch higher 
valué. In 1698 Jeremy Collier, a non-juring Jacobite 
clcrgyman, puhlishcd his " Short View of the Immoral- 
ity and Profanencss of the English Stage," which did 
much toward reforming the practice of the dramatists. 
The formal charactcristics, without the immorality, of 
the Restoration comedy rcappcared bricfly in Gold- 
smith's " She Stoops to Conqucr," 1772, and Sheri- 
dan's "Rivals," " School for Scandal," and "Critic," 
^^775-79. our last strictly " classical " comedies. 

None of this school of English comedians ajiproached 



From the Restoration to the Death of Pope. 145 

thcir nioiUl, Moliere. lio excclk'd his iinilatt>rs not 
only \\\ liis l'"icncli iirbanily — the polislR-tl wit aiul (.Icli- 
cate grace of liis stylc — but in tlie dcxtcrous unfolding 
of liis plot, and in tlic wisdom and truth of his criticism 
of lifc, and his insiglit into charactor. It is a symptom 
of the falso tasto of tho age that Shaksporo's plays vvoro 
rewiitten for tho Rostoration stago. Davcnant made 
new versions of " Macbeth " aiid " íulius Cícsar," sub- stage versions 

■' _ _ _ of Shakspcre. 

stituting rime for blank verse. In conjunction with 
Drydcn, he altered "The Tempest," eon\i)licatiiig the 
intrigue by the introductioii of a male counterpart to 
Miranda — a \-outh wlu) liad never seen a wonian. Shad- 
well " inipro\eil " " TinuMi of Athens," and Nalunn 
Tale furnishetl a new liflh aet to " King Lear," whieh 
tunietl I he play into a coniedy ! In the ¡¡rologue to his 
doetored versión of " Troilus and Crossida " nr\-den 
niade the ghost of Shakspero speak of hinisclf as 

Untau_>;ht, unpracticcd in a barbarous ai;x\ 

Tilomas Rymer, whom Po[ie pronounced a gootl eritic, 
was vcry severo upon Shakspero in his " Remarks on 
the Tragedles of tho Last Age," and in his " Short 
Vievv of Tragody," 1693, 1^^ said, " In tlie neighing of 
a horse or in the grovvling of a mastiñ, there is more 
humanity than, many times, in the tragical flights of 
Shakspero." " To Dcptford by water," vv ritos Pepys, 
in his diary for August 20. 1666, " roading 'Othello, 
Moor of Vonico,' which I ever herotofore ostoomed a 
miglity good play; Init, lia\ing so lalely read 'Tho 
A(.lventuros of b'ivo llours,' it seoms a mean thing. " 

In undramatic poetry the new school, both in England ^,. ... 

^ . ^ . . * The criticíll 

and m France, took its point of doparture in a reform sciiooiof 

. , poetry. 

against the extravagances of the Marinists, or concoited 
pocts, spccially reprosonted in England by Donne and 



146 



From, Chaucer to Teyínyson. 



" L' Art 
Poétique.' 



The heroic 
couplet. 



Cowley. The new poets, both in their theory and prac- 
tice, insisted upon correctness, clearness, polish, moder- 
ation, and good sense. Boileau's " L' Art Poétique," 
1673, inspired by Horace's "Ars Poética," was a 
treatise in verse upon the rules of correct composition, 
and it gave the law in criticism for over a century, not 
only in France, but in Germany and England. It gave 
English poetry a didactic turn and started the fashion of 
writing critical essays in riming couplets. The Earl of 
Mulgrave published two "poems" of this kind, an 
' ' Essay on Satire ' ' and an ' ' Essay on Poetry. ' ' The 
Earl of Roscommon — "who," said Addison, "malees 
even rules a noble poetry " — made a metrical versión of 
Horace's "Ars Poética," and wrote an original " Essay 
on Translated Verse." Of the same kind were Addi- 
son' s epistle to Sacheverel, entitled "An Account of the 
Greatest English Poets," and Pope's "Essay on Criti- 
cism," 171 1, which was nothing more than versified 
maxims of rhetoric, put with Pope's usual point and 
brilliancy. The classicism of the eighteenth century, it 
has been said, was a classicism in red heels and a peri- 
wig. It was Latin rather than Greek ; it turned to the 
least imaginative side of Latin literature and found its 
models, not in Vergil, Catullus, and Lucretius, but in 
the satires, epistles, and didactic pieces of Juvenal, 
Horace, and Persius. 

The chosen médium of the new poetry was the heroic 
couplet. This had, of course, been used before by 
English poets as far back as Chaucer. The greater part 
of ' ' The Canterbury Tales ' ' was written in heroic 
couplets. But now a new strength and precisión were 
given to the familiar measure by imprisoning the sense 
within the limit of the couplet, and by treating each line 
as also a unit in itself. Edmund Waller had written 



From the Restoration to ihe Death of Pope. 1 47 

verse of this kind as early as the reign of Charles I. 

He, said Dryden, " first showed us to conclude the ns eariier use. 

sense most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse of 

those before him, runs on for so many lines together 

that the reader is out of breath to overtake it." Sir 

John Denham, also, in his "Cooper's Hill," 1643, had 

written such verse as this : 

Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
My great example as it is my theme ! 
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, 
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full. 

Here we have the regular flow and the nice balance be- 
tvveen the first and second member of each couplet, and 
the first and second part of each line, which character- 
ized the verse of Dryden and Pope. 

Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join 

The varying verse, the full majestic line, 

The long resounding march and energy divine. 

Thus wrote Pope, using for the nonce the triplet and 
Alexandrine by which Dryden frequently varied the 
couplet. Pope himself added a greater neatness and 
polish to Dryden' s verse and brought the system to 
such monotonous perfection that he "made poetry a 
mere mechanic art." 

The lyrical poetry of this generation was almost 
entirely worthless. The dissolute wits of Charles the íí,e"pi ndlrlc^ ' 
II. 's court, Sedley, Rochester, Sackville, and the " mob 
of gentlemen who wrote with ease," threw off a few 
amatory trifles ; but the age was not spontaneous or 
sincere enough for genuine song. Cowley introduced 
the Pindaric ode, a highly artificial form of the lyric, in 
which the language was tortured into a kind of spurious 
grandeur, and the meter teased into a sound and fury, 



ode. 



148 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

signifying nothing. Cowley's Pindarics were filled with 
something which passed for fire, but has now utterly 
gone out. Nevertheless, the fashion spread, and ' ' he 
who could do nothing else," said Dr. Johnson, " could 
write like Pindar." The best of these odes was Dry- 
den's famous "Alexander's Feast," written for a cele- 
bration of St. Cecilia' s Day by a musical club. To this 
same fashion, also, we owe Gray's two fine odes, "The 
Progress of Poesy " and "The Bard," written a half- 
century later. 

Dryden was not so much a great poet as a solid 
John Dryden. thinker, with a splendid mastery of expression, who 
used his energetic verse as a vehicle for political argu- 
ment and satire. His first noteworthy poem, "Annus 
Mirabilis," 1667, was a narrative of the public events of 
the year 1666; namely, the Dutch war and the great 
fire of London. The subject of "Absalom and Achito- 
phel" — the first part of which appeared in 1681 — was 
the alleged plot of the Whig leader, the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, to defeat the succession of the Duke of York, 

His political TT 1 • í 1 

poems. afterward James II., by secunng the throne to Mon- 

mouth, a natural son of Charles II. The parallel 
añorded by the story of Absalom' s revolt against David 
was wrought out by Dryden with admirable ingenuity 
and keeping. He was at his best in satirical character 
sketches, such as the brilliant portraits in this poem of 
Shaftesbury, as the false counselor Achitophel, and of 
the Duke of Buckingham as Zimri. The latter was 
Dryden' s reply to " The Rehearsal. " " Absalom and 
Achitophel" was followed by "The Medal," a continu- 
ation of the same subject, and " Mac Flecknoe," a 
personal onslaught on the "true blue Protestant poet" 
Thomas Shadwell, a political and literary foe of Dryden. 
Flecknoe, an obscure Irish poetaster, being about to 



From the Restoraiion to the Death of Pope. 149 

retire from the throne of duncedom, resolved to settle 
the succession upon his son, Shadwell, whose claims to 
the inheritance are vigorously asserted. 

The rest to some faint meaning make pretensa, 
But Shadwell never deviates into sense. . . . 
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull 
With this prophetic blessing — Be thou diill. 

Dryden is our first great satirist. The formal satire 
had been written in the reign of Elizabeth by Donne, ^"-"^fgj^^ 
and by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter, and subse- 
quently by Marston, the dramatist, by Wither, Mar- 
vell, and others ; but all of these failed through an 
over violence of language, and a purpose too pro- 
nouncedly moral. They had no lightness of touch, no 
irony and mischief. They bore down too hard, imi- 
tated Juvenal, and lashed English society ¡n terms 
befitting the corruption of imperial Rome. They de- 
nounced, instructed, preached, did everything but 
satirize. The satirist must raise a laugh. Donne and 
Hall abused men in classes ; priests were worldly, law- 
yers greedy, courtiers obsequious, etc. But the easy 
scorn of Dryden and the delightful malice of Pope gave 
a pungent personal interest to their sarcasm, infinitely 
more effective than these commonplaces of satire. 

Dryden was as happy in controversy as in satire, and 
is unexcelled in the power to reason in verse. His powerasa 
" Religio Laici," 1682, was a poem in defense of the ínverse. 
English Church. But when James H. carne to the 
throne Dryden turned Catholic and wrote "The Hind 
and Panther," 1687, to vindicate his new belief. 
Dryden had the misfortune to be dependent upon royal 
patronage and upon a corrupt stage. He sold his pen 
to the court, and in his comedies he was heavily and 
deliberately lewd, a sin which he afterward acknowl- 



150 From Chaucer to Tennysoti. 

edgcd and regretted. Milton's " soul was like a star 
and dwelt apart, ' ' but Dryden vvrote for the trampling- 
multitude. He had a coarseness of moral fiber, but 
was not malignant in his satire, being of a large, care- 
less, and forgetting nature. He had that masculine, 
enduring cast of mind which gathers heat and clearness 
from motion, and grovvs better with age. His "Pables" 
— modernizations from Chaucer and translations from 
Boccaccio, vvritten the year before he died — are among 
his best vvorks. 

Dryden is also our first critic of any importance. His 
Dryden's critical cssays wcrc mostly vvritten as prefaces or dedi- 

proseessays. , ,^ , . _ 

cations to his poems and plays. But his Essay of 
Dramatic Poesie," which Dr. Johnson called our " first 
regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing," 
was in the shape of a Platonic dialogue. When not 
mislcd by the French classicism of his day, Dryden was 
an admirable critic, fuU of penetration and sound sense. 
He was the earliest writer, too, of modern literary prose. 
If the imitation of French modela was an injury to 
poctry it was a benefit to prose. The best modern 
prose is French, and it was the essay istsof the Gallicized 
Restoration age — Cowley, Sir William Temple, and, 
above all, Dryden — who gave modern English prose 
that simplicity, directness, and colloquial air which 
mark it off from the more artificial diction of Milton, 
Taylor, and Browne. 

A few books whose shaping influences lay in the past 
bclong by their date to this period. John Bunyan, a 
poor tinker, whose reading was almost wholly in the 
Bible and Fox's " Book of Martyrs," imprisoned for 
twelve years in Bedford jail for preaching at con- 
•• i'ii rim's venticles, wrote and, in 1678,' published his "Pilgrim's 
Progress." Progress," the greatest of religious allegories. Bunyan's 



From the Restoration to the Death of Pope, 151 

spiritual experiences werc so real to him that they took 
visible concrete shape \\\ bis imagination as men, 
womcn, cities, landscapes. It is tbe simplest, the 
most transparent of allegories. Unlike "Tbe Facrie 
Queene," the story of "Pilgrim's Progresa" has no 
reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and 
yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity 
Fair and tbe Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle 
and the Vallcy of tbe Shadovv of Death vvith tbe same 
belief witb which they read of Crusoe's cave or Alad- 
din' s palacc. 

It is a long step from the Bedford tinker to the culti- 
vated poet of " Paradise Lost." They represent the 
poles of tbe Puritan party. Yet it may admit of a 
doubt wbether the Puritan epic is, in essentials, as vital 
and original a work as the Puritan allcgory. They 
both carne out quietly and made little noise at first. 
Rut "Tbe Pilgrim's Progress" got at once into circu- Miitonand 

, ■ , , ,, . , <• , ,- 1- ■ Dryden. 

lation, and hardly a smgle copy oí tbe first edition 
remains. Milton, too — who received ten pounds for 
the copyright of "Paradise Lost" — seemingly found 
that "fit audience though few" for which he prayed, 
as bis poem rcached its second impression in five years 
(1672). Dryden visited him in bis retirement and 
asked leave to turn it into rime and put it on the stage 
as an opera. "Ay," said Milton, good-bumoredly, 
" you may tag my verses." And accordingly they 
appeared, duly tagged, in Dryden' s operatic masque, 
"The State of Innocence." In tbis startling con- 
junction we have the two ages in a nutsbell : tbe Com- 
monvvcaltb was an epic, tbe Restoration an opera. 

Tbe literary period covered by the life of Pope 
(1688-1744) is marked off by no distinct line from tbe ^^^^ ^^^ 
generation before it. Taste continued to be governed Q"een Anne. 



152 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



I^iteraturc and 
party politics. 



Manners and 
moráis in 
English 
society. 



by tlie precepts of Boileau and the French classical 
school. Poetry remained chiefly didactic and satirical, 
and satire in Pope's hands was more personal even 
than in Dryden's, and addressed itself less to public 
issues. The literature of the ' ' Augustan age ' ' of 
Queen Anne (1702-17 14) was still more a literature of 
tlie town and of fashionable society than that of the 
Restoration had been. It was also closely involved 
with ]xirty struggles of Whig and Tory, and the ablest 
pens on either side were taken into alliance by the 
political leaders. Swift was in high favor with the 
Tory ministers, Oxford and Bolingbroke, and his 
pamphlets, "The Public Spirit of the Whigs" and 
"The Conduct of the Allies," were rewarded with 
the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Addison became 
secretary of state under a Whig government. Prior 
was in the diplomatic service. Daniel Defoe, the 
author of " Robinson Crusoe," 1719, was a prolific 
political writer, conducted his " Review " in the in- 
terest of the Whigs, and was imprisoned and pilloried 
for his ironical pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with the 
Dissenters." Steele, who was a violent writer on the 
Whig side, held various public offices, such as Commis- 
sioner of Stamps and Commissioner for Forfeited Es- 
tates, and sat in Parliament. 

After the Revolution of 1688 the manners and moráis 
of English society were somewhat on the mend. The 
court of William and Mary, and of their successor, 
Queen Anne, set no such example of open profligacy 
as that of Charles II. But there was much hard drink- 
ing, gambling, dueling, and intrigue in London, and 
vice was fashionable till Addison partly preached and 
partly laughcd it down in the Spcdator. The women 
were mostly frivolous and uneducated, and not unfre- 



From the Restoralio-n io the Death of Pope. 153 

quently fast. They are spoken of with systematic dis- 
respect by nearly every writer of the time except 
Steele. "Every woman," wrote Pope, " ¡s at heart a 
rake." 

The reading public liad now become large enough 
to make letters a profession. Dr. Johnson said that Thepubiic 

^ _ ^ •' and the nien 

Pope was the first writer in whose case the bookseller of letters. 
took the place of the patrón. His translation of 
Homer, published by subscription, brought him be- 
tween eight and nine thousand pounds and made 
him independent. But the activity of the press pro- 
duced a swarm of poorly-paid hack-writers, penny-a 
liners, who lived from hand to mouth and did small 
literary jobs to order. Many of these inhabited Grub 
Street, and their lampoons against Pope and others of 
their more successful rivals called out Pope's " Dun- 
ciad," or epic of the dunces, by way of retaliation. 
The politics of the time were sordid, and consisted 
mainly of an ignoble scramble for office. The Whigs 
were fighting to maintain the Act of Succession in favor 
of the House of Hanover, and the Tories were secretly 
intriguing with the exiled Stuarts. Many of the 
leaders, such as the great Whig champion, John 
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, were jvithout political 
principie or even personal honesty. 

The church, too, was in a condition of spiritual dead- „ .... 

' Conditiotí of 

ness. Bishoprics and livings were sold, and given to the church. 
political favorites. Clergymen, like Swift and Lau- 
rence Sterne, were worldly in their lives and immoral 
in their writings, and were practically unbelievers. The 
growing religious skepticism appeared in the Deist 
controversy. Numbers of men in high position were 
Deists ; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for example, and 
Pope's brilliant friend, Henry St. John, Lord Boling- 



154 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Pope. 



brokc, thc lieacl of thc Tory ininistry, whose political 
writings had much influence upon his young French 
acqiKiintance, Voltaire. Pope was a Román Catholic, 
thouííh thcre was little to show it ¡n his writings, and 
the underlying thought of his famous " Essay on Man " 
was furnished him by Bolingbroke. The letters of the 
cold-heartcd Chcsterfield to his son were accepted as a 
manual of conduct, and La Rochefoucauld's cynical 
maxims were quoted as authority on Hfe and human 
nature. Said Swift : 

As Rochefoucaiild liis maxims drew 
From nature, I believe them true. 
Tlicy argüe no corrupted mind 
In him ; the fault is in mankind. 

The succession which Dryden had willed to Con- 
Aitxauder grcvc was takeu up by Alexander Pope. He was a 

man quite unHke Dryden — sickly, deformed, morbidly 
precocious, and spiteful ; nevertheless he joined on to 
and continued Dryden. He was more careful in his 
literary workmanship than his great forerunner, and in 
his "Moral Essays" and " Satires " he brought the 
Horatian epistle in verse, the formal satire and that 
species of didactic poem of which Boileau had given the 
first example, to an exquisite perfcction of finish and 
verbal art. Dryden had translated Vcrgil, and so Pope 
translated Homer. The throne of the dunces, which 
Dryden had conferred upon Shadwell, Pope, in his 
'The _ " Dunciad," passed on to two of his own literary foes, 

Thcobald and Colley Cibber. Thcre is a great waste of 
strength in this elabórate squib, and most of the petty 
writers whose ñames it has preserved, as has been 
said, like flies in amber, are now quite unknown. But, 
although we have to read it with notes to get the 
point of its allusions, it is easy to sce what execution it 



Dunciad. 



From the Restoration to the Deaih of Pope. 155 

must have done at the tiiiK', and it is impossible to 
vvithhold admiration from the wit, the wickedness, the 
triuniphant mischief of the thing. In the " Epistle to 
Dr, Arbuthnot," the satirical sketch of Addison — who 
had of?ended Pope by praising a rival translation of 
Homer — is as brilliant as anything of the kind ¡11 Dry- 
den. Pope's very mahgnity made his sting sharper 
than Dryden's. He secrcted venom, and workcd out 
his revenges deUberately, bringing all the resources of 
his art to bear upon the question of how to give the 
mpst pain most cleverly. 

Pope's masterpiece is, perhaps, "The Rape of the 
Lock," a mock heroic poem, a " dwarf IHad," recount- the Lock.^'^ ** 
ing, in five cantos, a society quarrel, which aróse from 
Lord Petre's cutting a lock of hair from the head of 
Mrs. Arabella Fermor. Boileau, in his " Lutrin," had 
treated with the same epic dignity a dispute over the 
placing of the reading-desk in a parish church. Pope 
was the Homer of the drawing-room, the boudoir, the 
tca-urn, the ombre-party, the sedan-chair, the parrot 
cage, and the lap-dogs. This poem, in its sparkle and 
airy grace, is the topmost blossom of a highly artificial 
society, the quintessence of whatever poetry was possi- 
ble in those 

Tea-Clip times of hood and hoop. 

And when the patch was worn, 

with whose decorative features, at least, the recent 
Queen Anne revival has made this generation familiar. 
It may be said of it, as Thackeray said of Gay's pas- 
torals : " It is to poetry what charming litde Dresden 
china figures are to sculpture, graceful, minikin, fan- 
tastic, with a certain beauty always accompanying 
them." "The Rape of the Lock," perhaps, stops 
short of beauty, but it attains elegance and prettiness in 



156 



From Chaucer lo Tennyson. 



Estímate of 
Pope as a poet ; 



as a literary 
artist. 



a supreme degree. In imitation of the gods and god- 
desses in the Iliad, vvho ¡ntermeddle for or against the 
human characters, Pope introduced the Sylphs of the 
Rosicrucian philosophy. We may measure the distance 
between imagination and fancy, if we will compare 
these little filagree creatures with Shakspere's el ves, 
whose occupation it was 

To tread the ooze of the salt deep, 

Or run upon the sharp wind of the north, . . . 

Or on the beached margent of the sea 

To dance their ringlets to the whispering wind. 

Very diñerent are the offices of Pope's fays : 

Our humble province is to tend the fair ; 

Not a less pleasing, though less glorious, care ; 

To save the powder from too rude a gale, 

Ñor let the imprisoned essences exhale. . . . 

Nay, oft in dreams invention we bestow 

To change a flounce or add a furbelow. 

Pope was not a great poet ; it has been doubted 
whethcr he was a poet at all. He does not touch the 
heart or stimulate the imagination, as the true poet 
always does. In the poetry of nature and the poetry 
of passion he was altogether impotent. His "Windsor 
Forest" and his "Pastorals" are artificial and false, 
not written with "the eye upon the object." His 
epistle of ' ' Eloisa to Abelard ' ' is declamatory and 
academic, and leaves the reader cold. The only one of 
his poems which is at all possessed with feeling is his 
pathetic " Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate 
Lady." But he was a great literary artist. Within 
the cramped and starched regularity of the heroic 
couplet, which the fashion of the time and his own 
habit of mind imposed upon him, he secured the 
largest variety of modulation and emphasis of which 



From the RestoraHon to the Death of Pope. 157 



that \(.rsc was capablc. He used antithesis, peri- 
¡)hrasis, and climax with grcat skill. His example 
dominated Englisli poetry for ncarly a century, and 
oven tiow, whcn a poct likc Dr. Holmes, for example, 
would wrilc satirc or humorous verse of a dig'iiified 
kind, he turns instinclively to the measure and manncr 
of Pope. lie was nt)t a consecutive thinker, hke 
Dryden, and cared less about the truth of his thouG;ht Hiscimiac- 
than about the pointedncss of its expression. His 
language was closer-grained than Dryden' s. His great 
art was the art of putting things. He ¡s more quoted 
than any other EngHsh jioet but Shakspere. He 
struck the average intcUigence, the common sense of 
Ení^Hsh readers, and furnished it with ncat, portable 
fornuüas, so that it no longer needetl to " vent its 
observation in mangled tonns," but could i)()ur itself 
out compactlv, artistiraliv, in liltle rcacI)--nKuK' moltls. 
Hut this hi_L;h-wroui;hl brilliancy, tliis uuccasin^ poiiit, 
sot)n fatigue. His poenis read like a series of c¡)i- 
grams ; and every Hne has a hit or an effect. 

From the reign of Queen Anne date the beginnings 
of the periodical essay. Newspapers had been pub- spectator. 
lished since the time of the civil war ; at first irregularly, 
and then regularly. But no literature of permanent 
valué appeared in periodical form until Richard Steele 
started the Taller, \\\ 1709. In this he was soon joined 
by his friend Joseph Addison ; and in its successor, the 
Spectator, the first number of which was issued March i , 
171 1, Addison' s contributions outnumbered Steele' s. 
The Tatler was published on three, the Spectator on six, 
days of the week. The Tatler gave political news, but 
each number of the Spectator consisted of a single essay. 
The object of these periodicals was to reflect the passing 
humors of the time, and to satirize the follies and minor 



158 



From Chaucer to Teyínyson. 



Character of 
Addison. 



immoralities of the town. "I shall endeavor," wrote 
Addison, in the tenth paper of the Spedator, " to enhven 
morahty with wit, and to temper wit with morahty. . . . 
It was said of Sócrates that he brought philosophy 
down from heaven to inhabit among men ; and I shall 
be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought 
philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and col- 
leges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and 
in coñee-houses. " 

Addison's satire was never personal. He was a mod- 
érate man, and did what he could to restrain Steele's 
intemperate party zeal. His character was dignified 
and puré, and his strongest emotion seems to have been 
his religious feeling. One of his contemperarles called 
him " a parson in a tie wig," and he wrote several ex- 
cellent hymns. His mission was that of censor of the 
public taste. Sometimes he lectured and sometimes he 
preached, and in his Saturday papers he brought his 
wide reading and nice scholarship into service for the 
instruction of his readers. Such was the series of essays 
in which he gave an elabórate review of ' ' Paradise 
Lost." Such also was his famous paper, " The Vision 
of Mirza," an oriental allegory of human life. The 
adoption of this slightly pedagogic tone was justified by 
the prevalent ignorance and frivolity of the age. But 
the lighter portions of the Spedator are those which 
have worn the best. Their style is at once correct and 
easy, and it is as a humorist, a sly observer of manners, 
and, above all, a delightful talker, that Addison is best 
known to posterity. In the personal sketches of the 
members of the Spectator Club, of Will Honeycomb, 
Captain Sentry, Sir Andrew Freeport, and, above all, 
Sir Roger de Coverley, the quaint and honest country 
gentleman, may be found the nucleus of the modern 



From the Restoratio7i to the Death of Pope. 159 

prose fiction of character. Addison's humor is always 
a trifle grave. There is no whimsy, no frolic in it, as in 
Sterne or Lamb. "He thinks justly," said Dr. John- 
son, " but he thinks faintly." The Spedator \i2iá a 
host of foUowers, from the somewhat heavy Rambler 
and Idler of Johnson down to the Salmagundi papers 
of our own Irving, who was, perhaps, Addison's latest 
and best hterary descendant. In his own age Addison 
made some figure as a poet and dramatist. His ' ' Cam- 
paign," celebrating the victory of Blenheim, had one 
much admired couplet, in which Marlborough was 
hkened to the ángel of tempest, who, 

Pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. 

His stately, classical tragedy, "Cato," which was acted "Cato." 
at Drury Lañe Theater in 1712, with immense applause, 
was pronounced by Dr. Johnson " unquestionably the 
noblest production of Addison's genius." It is, not- 
withstanding, cold and tedious, as a whole, though it 
has some fine declamatory passages — in particular the 
soliloquy of Cato in the fifth act — 

It must be so : Plato, thou reasonest well, etc. 
The greatest of the Queen Anne wits, and one of the 
most savage and powerful satirists that ever lived, was 
Jonathan Swift. As secretary in the family of Sir Wil- jonathan 
liam Temple, and domestic chaplain to the Earl of Berk- 
eley, he had known in youth the bitterness of poverty 
and dependence. Afterward he wrote himself into influ- 
ence with the Tory ministry, and was promised a bishop- 
ric, but was put oñ with the deanery of St. Patrick's, and 
retired to Ireland to "die likea poisoned rat in a hole." 
His life was made tragical by the forecast of the mad- 
ness which finally overtook him, "The stage dark- 



i6o 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



" Gulliver's 
Travels." 



Satiric purpose 
of the work. 



ened," said Scott, "ere the curtain fell." Insanity 
deepened into idiocy and a hideous silence, and for 
three years before his death he spoke hardly ever a 
word. He had du-ected that his tombstone should bear 
the inscription, Ubi sceva indignatio cor ullerius lacerare 
nequit. "So great a man he seems to me," wrote 
Thackeray, " that thinkino^ of him is hke thinkhig of an 
empire falhng." 

Swift's first noteworthy pubHcation was his "Tale 
of a Tub," 1704, a satire on reHgious differences. 
But his great work was "GulHver's Travels," 1726, 
the book in which his hate and scorn of mankind and 
the long rage of mortified pride and thwarted ambition 
found their fuUest expression. Children read the voy- 
ages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, to the flying island 
of Laputa and the country of the Houyhnhnms, as 
they read " Robinson Crusoe," as stories of wonder- 
ful adventure. Swift had all of Defoe's realism, his 
power of giving verisimilitiide to his narrative by the 
invention of a vast number of small, exact, consistent 
details. But underneath its fairy tales "Gulliver's 
Travels" is a satire, far more radical than any of Dry- 
den's or Pope's, because directed, not against par- 
ticular parties or persons, but against human nature. 
In his account of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Swift tries 
to show that human greatness, goodness, beauty disap- 
pear if the scale be altered a little. If men were six 
inches high instead of six feet, their wars, governments, 
science, religión — all their institutions, in fine, and all 
the courage, wisdom, and virtue by which these have 
becn built up, would appear laughable. On the other 
hand, if they were sixty feet high instead of six, they 
would become disgusting. The complexión of the finest 
ladies would show blotches, hairs, excrescences, and an 



ron y. 



From the Restoration to the Death of Pope. i6i 

overpowering effluvium would breathe from the pores of 
the skin. Finally, in his loathsome caricature of man- 
kind as Yahoos, he contrasts them, to their shame, 
with the beasts, and sets instinct above reason. 

The method of Swift's satire was grave irony. 
Among his minor writings in this kind are his ' ' Argu- s^|fj',y^f^Q°/ 
ment against AboHshing Christianity," his " Modest 
Proposal" for utiHzing the surplus population of Ireland 
by eating the babies of the poor, and his ' ' Predictions 
of Isaac Bickerstaff." In the last he predicted the 
death of one Partridge, an almanac maker, at a certain 
day and hour, When the time set was past, he pub- 
Hshed a minute account of Partridge' s last moments ; 
and when the subject of this excellent fooling printed an 
indignant denial of his own death, Swift answered very 
temperately, proving that he was dead and remon- 
strating with him on the violence of his language. "To 
cali a man a fool and villain, an impudent fellow, only 
for differing from him in a point merely speculative, is, 
in my humble opinión, a very improper style for a per- 
son of his education." Swift wrote verses as well as 
prose, but their motive was the reverse of poetical. His 
gross and cynical humor vulgarized whatever it touched. 
He leaves us no illusions, and not only strips his subject, 
but flays it and shows the raw muscles beneath the skin. 
He delighted to dwell upon the lowest bodily functions 
of human nature. "He saw bloodshot," said Thack- 
eray. 



1. Edmund Gosse : " History of Eighteenth Cen- 
tury Literature " (1660-1780). London : 1889. 

2. Macaulay's Essay, "The Comic Dramatists of the 
Restoration," 



1 62 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

3. "The Poetical Works of John Dryden." Lon- 
don : 1873. 

4. Thackeray : " English Humorists of the Last 
Century. ' ' 

5. " Sir Roger de Coverley." New York : 1878. 

6. SwiFT : "Tale of a Tub," "GuUiver's Travels," 
" Directions to Servants," " Polite Conversation," 
"The Great Question Debated" ; "Verses on the 
Death of Dean Swift." 

7. "The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope." Lon- 
don : 1869. 

8. CoNGREVE : " Way of the World" ; Mermaid 
Series of Oíd Dramatists. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FrOM THE DeATH OF PoPE TO THE FrENCH ReVO- 
LUTION, 1 744-1 789. 

Pope's example continued potent for fifty years after 
his death. Especially was this so in satiric and didactic 
poetry. Not only Dr. Johnson' s adaptations from 
Juvenal, "London," 1738, and "The Vanity of Human 
Wishes," 1749, but Gifford's "Baviad," 1791, and 
"Maeviad," 1795, and Byron's " English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers," 1809, were in the verse and the 
manner of Pope. In Johnson' s " Lives of the Poets," 
1 78 1, Dryden and Pope are treated as the two greatest 
English poets. But long before this a revolution in 
literary taste had begun, a movement which is vari- _, 

_ . The romantic 

ously described as the "return to nature," or "the rise movement. 
of the new romantic school." 

For nearly a hundred years poetry had dealt with 
manners and the life of towns — the gay, prosaic Ufe of 
Congreve or of Pope. The solé concession to the life 
of nature was the oíd pastoral, which, in the hands 
of cockneys like Pope and Ambrose Philips, who 
merely repeated stock descriptions at second or third 
hand, became even more artificial than a " Beggar's 
Opera" or a "Rape of the Lock." These at least 
were true to their environment, and were natural just 
because they were artificial. But "The Seasons " of "seasons.^" 
James Thomson, published in ínstalments from 1726-30, 
had opened a new field. Their theme was the English 
landscape, as varied by the changes of the year, and 
163 



164 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

they were written by a true lover and observer of 
nature. Mark Akenside's " Pleasures of Imagination," 
1744, published the year of Pope's death, was written, 
like "The Seasons," in blank verse ; and although its 
language had the formal, didactic cast of the Queen 
Anne poets, it pointed unmistakably in the new direc- 
tion. Thomson had painted the soft beauties of a 
highly cultivated land — lawns, gardens, forest-preserves, 
orchards, and sheep-walks. But now a fresh note was 
struck in the literature, not of England alone, but of 
Germany and France — romanticism, the chief element 
The " return in which was a love of the wild. Poets turned from the 

to nature." 

tameness of modern existence to savage nature and the 
heroic simplicity of life among primitive tribes. In 
France, Rousseau introduced the idea of the natural 
man, foUowing his instincts in disregard of social con- 
ventions. In Germany Bodmer published, in 1753, 
the first edition of the oíd Germán epic, the " Nibel- 
ungen Lied." Works of a similar tendency in England 
were the odes of William CoUins and Thomas Gray, 
published between 1747 and 1757 ; especially CoUins' s 
"Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands,'" and 
Gray's "Bard," a Pindaric in which the last survivor of 
the Welsh bards invokes vengeance on Edward I., the 
destróyer of his guild. Gray and Masón, his friend 
and editor, made translations from the ancient Welsh 
and Norse poetry. Thomas Percy's " ReUques of 
"Reiiques." Ancicnt English Poetry," 1765, aroused the taste for 
oíd ballads. Richard Hurd's " Letters on Chivalry 
and Romance," Thomas Warton's " History of Eng- 
lish Poetry," 1774-78, Tyrwhitt's critical edition of 
Chaucer, and Horace Walpole's Gothic romance, "The 
Castle of Otranto," 1765, stimulated this awakened 

1 Written in 1749 ; printed ¡n 1788. 



From Death of Pope to the Frene h Revolution. 165 

interest in the picturesque aspects of feudal life, and 
contributed to the fondness for supernatural and medi- 
eval subjects. James Beattie's "Minstrel," 1771, de- 
scribed the educating influence of Scottish mountain 
scenery upon the genius of a young poet. But the 
most remarkable instances of this passion for wild 
nature and the romantic past were the " Poems of 
Ossian " and Thomas Chatterton's hterary forgeries. 

In 1762 James Macpherson pubHshed the first in- 
stalment of what professed to be a translation of the Macpherson's 

^ _ _ _ Poems of 

poems of Ossian, a GaeHc bard, whom tradition placed Ossian." 
in the third century. Macpherson said that he made 
his versión — including two complete epics, ' ' Fingal ' ' 
and " Temora " — from Gaelic manuscripts, which he 
had coUected in the Scottish Highlands. A fierce 
controversy at once sprang up over the genuineness of 
these remains. Macpherson vvas challenged to pro- 
duce his origináis, and when, many years after, he 
published the Gaelic text, it was asserted that this was 
nothing but a translation of his own English into 
modern Gaelic. Of the manuscripts which he pro- 
fessed to have found not a scrap remained : the Gaelic 
text was printed from transcriptions in Macpherson's 
handwriting or in that of his secretarles. 

But whether these poems were the work of Ossian or 
of Macpherson, they made a deep impression at the í,e^m¡nd"f°" 
time. Napoleón admired them greatly, and Goethe ^"'■°p^- 
inserted passages from the ' ' Songs of Selma ' ' in his 
" Sorrows of Werther. " Macpherson composed — or 
translated — them in an abrupt, rhapsodical prose, re- 
sembling the English versión of Job or of the prophecies 
of Isaiah. They filled the minds of their readers with 
images of vague sublimity and desolation ; the mountain 
torrent, the mist on the hills, the ghosts of héroes half 



i66 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Thomas 
Chatterton. 



The Rowley 
poems. 



seen by the setting moon, the thistle in the ruined 
courts of chieftains, the grass whistling on the windy 
heath, the gray rock by the blue stream of Lutha, and 
the diffs of sea-surrounded Gormal. 

A tale of the times of oíd ! 

Why, thou wanderer unseen ! Thou hender of the thistle of 
Lora ; why, thou breeze of the valley, hast thou left mine ear? 
I hear no distant roar of streams ! No sound of the harp 
from the rock ! Come, thou huntress of Lutha, Malvina, cali 
back his soul to the bard. I look forward to Lochlin of lakes, 
to the dark billowy bay of U-thorno, where Fingal descends 
from Ocean, from the roar of winds. Fevv are the héroes of 
Morven in a land unknown. 

Thomas Chatterton, who died by his own hand in 
1770, at the age of seventeen, is one of the most 
wonderful examples of precocity in the history of 
literature. His father had been sexton of the ancient 
Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, in Bristol, and the boy's 
sensitive imagination took the stamp of his surround- 
ings. He taught himself to read from a black-letter 
Bible. He drew charcoal sketches of churches, castles, 
knightly tombs, and heraldic blazonry. When only 
eleven years oíd he began the fabrication of documents 
in prose and verse, which he ascribed to a fictitious^ 
Thomas Rowley, a secular priest at Bristol in the 
fifteenth century. Chatterton pretended to have found 
these among the contents of an oíd chest in the muni- 
ment room of St. Mary Redcliffe' s. The Rowley poems 
included two tragedles, "Aella" and "Goddwyn," 
two cantos of a long poem on "The Battle of Hastings," 
and a number of ballads and minor pieces. 

Chatterton had no precise knowledge of early Eng- 
lish, or even of Chaucer. His method of working was 
as follows : He made himself a manuscript glossary of 
the words marked as archaic in Bailey's and Kersey's 



Froni Death of Pope to the French Revolution. 167 

English dictionaries, composed his poems first in 
modern language, and then turned them into ancient 
spelling, and substituted here and there the oíd words 
in his glossary for their modern equivalents. Natu- 
rally he made many mistakes, and though Horace 
Walpole, to whom he sent some of his pieces, was 
unable to detect the forgery, his friend Gray, to whom 
he submitted them, at once pronounced them spurious. 
Nevertheless there was a controversy over Rowley 
hardly less obstinate than that over Ossian, a con- 
troversy made possible only by the then almost uni- 
versal ignorance of the forms, scansion, and vocabulary 
of early English poetry. Chatterton's poems are of 
little valué in themselves, but they are the record of an 
industry and imitative quickness marvelous in a mere 
child, and they show how, with the instinct of genius, 
he threw himself into the main literary current of his 
time. 

Discarding the couplet of Pope, the poets now went 
back for models to the Elizabethan writers. Thomas Revivaiofoid 

. . English verse 

Warton published m 1753 his " Observations on the forms. 
Faerie Queene." Beattie's "Minstrel," Thomson' s 
" Castle of Indolence," and William Shenstone's 
' ' Schoolmistress ' ' were all written in the Spenserian 
stanza. Shenstone gave a partly humorous efíect to his 
poem by imitating Spenser's archaisms, and Thomson 
reproduced in many passages the copious harmony and 
luxuriant imagery of "The Faerie Queene." John 
Dyer's " Fleece" was a poem in blank verse on English 
wool-growing, after the fashion of Vergil's " Georgics." 
The subject was unfortunate, for, as Dr. Johnson said, 
it is impossible to make poetry out of serges and 
druggets. Dyer's " Grongar Hill," which mingles re- 
flection with natural description in the manner of Gray's 



1 68 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

" Eleg-y Written in a Country Churchyard," was com- 
posed in the octosyllabic verse of Milton's "L' Allegro" 
and " II Penseroso." Milton's minor poems, which had 
hitherto bccn ncglected, exercised a great influence on 
Collins and Gray. Collins's "Ode to Simplicity" was 
written in the stanza of Milton's "Nativity," and his 
exquisite unrimed "Ode to Evening" was a study in 
versification, after Milton's translation of Horace's 
"Ode to Pyrrha," in the original meters. Shakspere 
began to be studied more reverently : numerous critical 
editions of his plays were issued, and Garrick restored 
his puré text to the stage. Collins was an enthusiastic 
student of Shakspere, and one of his sweetest poems, 
" The Dirge in Cymbeline," was inspired by the tragedy 
of "Cymbeline." The verse of Gray, Collins, and the 
Warton brothers abounds in verbal reminiscences of 
Shakspere ; bvit their genius was not allied to his, being 
exclusively lyrical and not at all dramatic. 

The muse of this romantic school was fancy rather 
than passion. A thoughtful melancholy, a gentle, 
schülarly pensiveness, the spirit of Milton's "II Pen- 
seroso," pervades their poetry. Gray was a fastidious 
scholar, who produced very little, but that little of the 
finest quality. His famous "Elegy," expressing a 
meditative mood in language of the choicest perfection, 
is the representative poem of the second half of the 
eighteenth century, as "The Rape of the Lock " is 
of the first. The romanticists were quietists, and their 
scenery is characteristic. They loved solitude and 
evening, the twilight vale, the mossy hermitage, ruins, 
glens, and caves. Their style was elegant and academic, 
retaining a little of the stilted poetic diction of their 
classical forerunners. Personification and periphrasis 
were their favorite mannerisms : Collins's odes were 



From Death of Pope to the French Revolution. 169 

largely addressed to abstractions, such as Fear, Pity, 
Liberty, Mercy, and Simplicity. A poet in their dialect 
was ahvays a ' ' bard " ; a countryman was ' ' the un- 
tutored swain," and a woman was "a nymph " or "the 
fair," just as in Dryden and Pope. Thomson is per- 
petually mindful of Vergil, and afraid to speak simply. 
He uses too many Latin epithets, like amusive and pre- 
cipitante and calis a fishline 

The floating line snatched from the hoary steed. 

They left much for Covvper and Wordsworth to do in 
the way of infusing the new blood of a strong, racy Coiiins's 
English into our exhausted poetic diction. Their poetry 
is impersonal, bookish, literary. It lacks emotional 
forcé, except nowand then in Gray's immortal "Elegy," 
in his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton CoUege," in 
CoUins's lines, "On the Death of Thomson," and his 
little ode beginning " How sleep the brave." 

The new school did not lack critical expounders of 
its principies and practice. Joseph Warton published, brothers!^ °° 
in 1756, the first volume of his " Essay on the Genius 
and Writings of Pope," an elabórate review of Pope's 
writings seriatim, doing him certainly full justice, but 
ranking him below Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton. 
" Wit and satire," wrote Warton, "are transitory and 
perishable, but nature and passion are eternal. , . . 
He stuck to describing modern manners ; but those 
manners, because they are familiar, artificial, and pol- 
ished, are, in their very nature, unfit for any lofty eñort 
of the muse. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually 
possessed he withheld and stifled. Surely it is no narrow 
and niggardly encomium to say, he is the great poet of 
reason, the first of ethical authors in verse." Warton 
illustrated his critical positions by quoting freely not 



lyo 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Horace 
Walpole and 
the Gothic 
revival. 



Boswell's 
" Life of 
Johnson." 



only from Spenser and Milton, but from recent poets, 
like Thomson, Gray, CoUins, and Dyer. He testified 
that "The Seasons " had " been very instrumental in 
diffusing a general taste for the beauties of nature and 
landscape." It was symptomatic of the change ín 
literary taste that the natural or English school of land- 
scape gardening novv began to displace the French and 
Dutch fashion of clipped hedges and regular parterres, 
and that Gothic architecture came into repute. Horace 
Walpole was a virtuoso in Gothic art, and in his castle 
at Strawberry Hill he made a collection of ancient 
armor, illuminated manuscripts, and bric-a-brac of all 
kinds. Gray had been Walpole' s traveling companion 
in France and Italy, and the two had quarreled and 
separated, but were afterward reconciled. From Wal- 
pole' s prívate printing-press at Strawberry Hill Gray's 
two "sister odes," "The Bard" and "The Progress of 
Poesy," were first issued in 1757. Both Gray and 
Walpole were good correspondents, and their printed 
letters are among the most delightful literature of the 
kind. 

The central figure among the English men of letters 
of that generation was Samuel Johnson (1709- 1784), 
whose memory has been preserved less by his own 
writings than by James Boswell's famous " Life of John- 
son," published in 1791. Boswell was a Scotch laird 
and advócate, who first met Johnson in London, when 
the latter was fifty-four years oíd. Boswell was not a 
very wise or witty person, but he reverenced the worth. 
and intellect which shone through his subject's uncouth. 
exterior. He followed him about, note-book in hand, 
bore all his snubbings patiently, and made the best 
biography ever written. It is related that the doctor 
once said that if he thought Boswell meant to write his 



From Death of Pope to the French Revolution. 171 

life, he should prevent it by taking Boswell's. And yet 
Johnson' s own writings and this biography of him have 
changed places in relative importance so completely 
that Carlyle predicted that the former would soon be 
reduced to notes on the latter ; and Macaulay said that 
the man who was known to his contemporaries as a 
great writer was known to posterity as an agreeable 
companion. 

Johnson was one of those rugged, eccentric, self- 
developed characters so common among the EngHsh. Character 
He was the son of a Lichfield bookseller, and after a Johnson, 
course at Oxford, which was cut short by poverty, and 
an unsuccessful career as a schoolmaster, he had come 
up to London, in 1737, where he supported himself for 
many years as a bookseller' s hack. Gradually his great 
learning and abilities, his ready social wit and powers as 
a talker, caused his company to be sought at the tables 
of those whom he called- " the great." He was a club- 
bable man, and he drew about him at the tavern a 
group of the most distinguished intellects of the time : 
Edmund Burke, the orator and statesman, Oliver Gold- 
smith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the portrait painter, and 
David Garrick, the great actor, who had been a pupil in 
Johnson' s school, near Lichfield. Johnson was the 
typical John BulI of the last century. His oddities, 
virtues, and prejudices were thoroughly English, He 
hated Frenchmen, Scotchmen, and Americans, and had 
a cockneyish attachment to London. He was a high 
Tory and an orthodox churchman ; he loved a lord in 
the abstract, and yet he asserted a sturdy independence 
against any lord in particular. He was deeply religious, 
but had an abiding fear of death. He was burly in 
person and slovenly in dress, his shirt-frill always 
covered with snufí. He was a great diner-out, an inor- 



172 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

dinate tea-drinker, and a voracious and untidy feeder. 
An inherited scrofula, which often took the íorm of 
hypochondria and threatened to affect his brain, de- 
prived him of control over the muscles of his face. 
Boswell describes how his features worked, how he 
snorted, grunted, whistled, and roUed about in his chair 
when getting ready to speak. He records his minutest 
traits, such as his habit of pocketing the orange peéis at 
the club, and his superstitious way of touching all the 
posts between his house and the Mitre Tavern, going 
back to do it, if he skipped one by chance. Though 
bearish in his manners and arrogant in dispute, especially 
when talking " for victory," Johnson had a large and 
tender heart. He loved his ugly, oíd wife — twenty-one 
years his sénior — and he had his house fuU of unfortu- 
nates — a blind woman, an invalid surgeon, a destitute 
widow, a negro servant — vvhom he supported for many 
years, bearing with all their ill-humors patiently. 

Among Johnson' s numerous writings the ones best 
Hiswritings. entitled to remembrance are, perhaps, his " Dictionary 
of the English Language," 1755, his moral tale, " Ras- 
selas," 1759, the introduction to his edition of Shak- 
spere, 1765, and his " Lives of the Poets," 1781. 
Johnson vvrote a sonorous, cadenced prose, fuU of big 
Latin words and balanced clauses. Here is a sentence, 
for example, from his ' ' Visit to the Hebrides ' ' : 

We vvere now treading that illustrious island which was once 

the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans 

and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and 

the blessings of rehgion. To abstract the mind from all local 

johnsonian emotion would be ¡mpossible, if it were endeavored, and would 

"^ ' ■ be foolish, if it were possible. 

The diñerence between his colloquial style and his book 
style is well illustrated in the instance cited by Macau- 



From Death of Pope to the French Revolution. 173 

lay. Speaking of Villiers's "Rehearsal," Johnson said, 

" It has not wit enough to keep it sweet" ; then paused 

and added — translating EngHsh into Johnsonese — ' ' it has 

not vitality sufficient to preserve it from putrefaction." 

There is more of this in Johnson' s Rambler and Idler 

papers than in his latest work, " Lives of the Poets." *' Uves of the 

In this he showed himself a sound and judicious critic, 

though with decided limitations. His understanding 

was solid, but he was a thorough classicist, and his taste 

in poetry was formed on Pope. He was unjust to 

Milton and to his own contemporaries, Gray, CoUins, 

Shenstone, and Dyer. He had no sense of the higher 

and subtler graces of romantic poetry, and he had a com- 

ical indifíerence to the " beauties of nature." When 

Boswell once ventured to remark that poor Scotland 

had, at least, some " noble wild prospects," the doctor 

repHed that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever saw 

was the road that led to London. 

The EngHsh novel of real life had its origin at this 
time, Books like Defoe's " Robinson Crusoe," "Cap- 
tain Singleton," "Journal of the Plague," etc., were Enfúshíovd. 
tales of incident and adventure rather than novéis. The 
novel deals primarily with character and with the inter- 
action of characters upon one another, as developed by 
a regular plot. The first English novelist, in the mod- 
ern sense of the word, was Samuel Richardson, a 
printer, who began authorship in his fiftieth year with his 
" Pamela," 1740, the story of a young servant girl who 
resisted the seductions of her master, and, finally, as the 
reward of her virtue, became his wife. ' ' Clarissa Har- 
lowe," 1748, was the tragical history of a high-spirited 
young lady who, being driven from her home by her 
family because she refused to marry the suitor selected 
for her, fell into the toils of Lovelace, an accomplished 



174 



From Chaucer to Teyínyson. 



Samuel 
Richardson. 



Sentimental- 
ism. 



Fielding's 
novéis. 



rake. After struggling heroically against ^very form of 
artífice and violence, she was at last drugged and ruined. 
She died of a broken heart, and Lovelace, borne down 
by remorse, was killed in a duel by a cousin of Clarissa. 
" Sir Charles Grandison," 1753, was Richardson's por- 
trait of an ideal fine gentleman, whose stately doings fiU 
eight volumes, but who seems to the modern reader a 
bore and a prig. All these novéis were written in the 
form of letters passing between the characters, a method 
which fitted Richardson's subjective cast of mind. He 
knew little of life, but he identified himself intensely 
with his principal character and produced a strong effect 
by minute, accumulated touches. ' ' Clarissa Harlowe ' ' 
is his masterpiece, though even in that the situation is 
painfuUy prolonged, the heroine's virtue is self-conscious 
and rhetorical, and there is something almost ludicrously 
unnatural in the copiousness with which she pours her- 
self out in gushing epistles to her female correspondent 
at the very moment when she is beset with dangers, 
persecuted, agonized, and driven nearly mad. In Rich- 
ardson's novéis appears, for the first time, that senti- 
mentalism which now began to infect European liter- 
ature. ' ' Pamela ' ' was translated into French and 
Germán, and fell in with the current of popular feeling 
which found fuUest expression in Rousseau' s " Nouvelle 
Heloise," 1759, and Goethe's " Leiden des Jungen 
Werther," which set all the world a-weeping in 1774. 

Coleridge said that to pass from Richardson's books 
to those of Henry Fielding was like going into the fresh 
air from a cióse room heated by stoves. Richardson, 
it has been aíifirmed, knew man, but Fielding knew men. 
The latter's first novel, " Joseph Andrews," 1742, was 
begun as a travesty of ' ' Pamela. ' ' The hero, a 
brother of Pamela, was a young footman in the employ 



From Death of Pope io the French Revolutio7i. 175 

of Lady Booby, from whom his virtue suffered a like 
assault to that made upon Pamela' s by her master. 
This reversal of the natural situation was in itself full of 
laughable possibilities, had the book gone on simply 
as a burlesque. But the exuberance of Fielding's 
genius led him beyond his original design. His hero, 
leaving Lady Booby' s service, goes traveling with good 
Parson Adams, and is soon engaged in a series of 
comical and rather boisterous adventures. 

Fielding had seen life, and his characters were 
painted from the life with a bold, free hand. He was a "reer."°"^' 
gentleman by birth, and had made acquaintance with 
society and the town in 1727, when he was a handsome, 
stalwart young fellow, with high animal spirits and a 
great appetite for pleasure. He soon ran himself into 
debt and began writing for the stage ; married, and 
spent his wife's fortune, living for a while in much 
splendor as a country gentleman, and afterward in a 
reduced condition as a rural justice with a salary of 
five hundred pounds of " the dirtiest money on earth." 
Fielding's masterpiece was " Tom Jones," 1749, and it "Tom jones.' 
remains one of the best of English novéis. Its hero is 
very much after Fielding's own heart, wild, spend- 
thrift, warm-hearted, forgiving, and greatly in need of 
forgiveness. The same type of character, with the lines 
deepened, reappears in Captain Booth, in "Amelia," 
1 75 1, the heroine of which is a portrait of Fielding's 
wife. With Tom Jones is contrasted Blifil, the embodi- 
ment of meanness, hypocrisy, and cowardice. Sophia 
Western, the heroine, is one of Fielding's most admir- 
able creations. For the regulated morality of Richard- 
son, with its somewhat old-grannified air, Fielding sub- 
stituted instinct. His virtuous characters are virtu- 
ous by impulse only, and his ideal of character is 



176 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

manliness. In "Jonathan Wild" the hero is a high- 
wayman. This novel is ironical, a sort of prose mock- 
heroic, and is one of the strongest, though certainly the 
least pleasing, of Fielding's writings. 

Tobías Smollett was an inferior Fielding with a differ- 
Smoiiett's ence. He was a Scotch ship-surgeon, and had spent 

novéis. _ _ . . 

some time in the West Indies. He introduced into 
fiction the now familiar figure of the British tar, in the 
persons of Tom Bowling and Commodore Trunnion, as 
Fielding had introduced, in Squire Western, the 
equally national type of the hard-swearing, deep- 
drinking, fox-hunting Tory squire. Both Fielding and 
Smollett were of the hearty British '* beef-and-beer " 
school ; their novéis are downright, energetic, coarse, 
and high-blooded ; low life, physical life, runs riot 
through their pages — tavern brawls, the breaking of 
pates, and the offhand courtship of country wenches. 
Smollett's books, suchas "Roderick Random," 1748, 
"Peregrine Pickle," 1751, and " Ferdinand Count 
Fathom," I752j were more purely stories of broadly 
comic adventure than Fielding's. The latter's view of 
life was by no means idyllic ; but with Smollett this 
English realism ran into vulgarity and a hard Scotch 
literalness, and character was pushed to caricature. 
"The generous wine of Fielding," says Taine, " in 
Smollett's hands becomes brandy of the dram-shop." 
A partial exception to this is to be found in his last and 
"Huniphrey bcst novcl, " Humphrcy Clinker," 1770. The influ- 
ence of Cervantes and of the French novelist Le Sage, 
who finished his "Adventures of Gil Blas" in 1735, 
are very perceptible in Smollett. 

A genius of much finer mold was Laurence Sterne, 
the author of " Tristram Shandy," 1759-67, and the 
" Sentimental Journey," 1768. " Tristram Shandy " is 



From Death of Pope to the French Revolution. 177 

hardly a novel : the story merely serves to hold 

together a number of characters, such as Únele Toby "J"'''^'''?,'" , 

° ... Shandy"and 

and Corporal Trim, conceived with rare subtlety and joy^n^"''.™^"'*' 

originality. Sterne's chosen province was the whim- 

sical, and his great model was Rabelais. His books 

are fuU of digressions, breaks, surprises, innuendos, 

double meanings, mystifications, and all manner of odd 

turns. Coleridge and Carlyle unite in pronouncing 

him a great humorist. Thackeray says that he was 

only a great jester. Humor is the laughter of the 

heart, and Sterne's pathos is closely interwoven with 

his humor. He was the foremost of English senti- 

mentalists, and he had that taint of insincerity which 

distinguishes sentimentalism from genuine sentiment, 

like Goldsmith's, for example. Sterne, in life, was 

selfish, heartless, and untrue. A clergyman, his world- 

liness and vanity and the indecency of his writings 

were a scandal to the church, though his sermons were 

both witty and affecting. He enjoyed the titillation of 

his own emotions, and he had practiced so long at 

detecting the latent pathos that lies in the expression of 

dumb things and of poor, patient animáis, that he 

could summon the tear of sensibility at the thought of 

a discarded post-chaise, a dead donkey, a starling in a 

cage, or of Únele Toby putting a house-fly out of the 

window, and saying, "There is room enough in the 

world for thee and me," It is a high proof of his 

clevcrness that he generally succeeds in raising the 

desired feeling in his readers even from such trivial 

occasions. He was a minute philosopher, his phi- steme's humor 

losophy was kindly, and he taught the delicate art of ^"'^ Pathos. 

making much out of little. Less coarse than Fielding, 

he is far more corrupt, Fielding goes bluntly to the 

point ; Sterne lingers among the temptations and sus- 



178 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Goldsmith's 
" Vicar of 
Wakefield." 



Popular 
character of 
modera 
fiction. 



pends the expectation to tease and excite it. For- 
bidden fruit had a relish for him, and his pages seduce. 
He is full of good sayings both tender and witty. It 
was Sterne, for example, who wrote, ' ' God tempers 
the wind to the shorn lamb. ' ' 

A very different writer was Oliver Goldsmith, whose 
"Vicar of Wakefield," 1766, was the earliest, and is 
still one of the best, novéis of domestic and rural life. 
The book, like its author, was thoroughly Irish, full of 
buUs and inconsistencies. Very improbable things 
happened in it with a cheerful defiance of logic. But 
its characters are true to nature, drawn with an idyllic 
sweetness and purity, and with touches of a most loving 
humor. Its hero, Dr. Primrose, was painted after 
Goldsmith's father, a poor clergyman of the English 
Church in Ireland, and the original, likewise, of the 
country parson in Goldsmith's " Deserted Village," 
1770, who was "passing rich on forty pounds a year." 
This poem, though written in the fashionable couplet of 
Pope, and even containing a few verses contributed by 
Dr. Johnson — so that it was not at all in line with 
the work of the romanticists — did, perhaps, as much as 
anything of Gray's or of Collins's to recall English 
poetry to the simplicity and freshness of country life. 

Except for the comedies of Sheridan and Goldsmith, 
and, perhaps, a few other plays, the stage had now 
utterly declined. The novel, which is dramatic in 
essence, though not in form, began to take its place, 
and to represent life, though less intensely, yet more 
minutely than the theater could do. In the novelists 
of the eighteenth century, the life of the people, as 
distinguished from ' ' society ' ' or the upper classes, 
began to invade literature. Richardson was distinctly a 
bourgeois writer, and his contemporaries — Fielding, 



From Death of Pope to the Fr-ench Revohition. 179 

SmoUett, Sterne, and Goldsmith — ranged over a wide 
variety of ranks and conditions. This is one thing 
which distinguishes the literature of the second half of 
the eigh'teenth century from that of the first, as well as 
in some degree from that of all previous centuries. 

Among the authors of this generation whose writings 
belonged to other departments of thought than puré 
literature may be mentioned, in passing, the great Gibbonand 
historian Edward Gibbon, whose " Dedine and Fall of 
the Román Empire " was pubHshed from 1776-88, and 
Edmund Burke, whose pohtical speeches and pamphlets 
possess a true literary quahty. 

The romantic poets had addressed the imagination 
rather than the heart. It was reserved for two men — a 
contrast to one another in almost every respect — to 
bring once more into British song a strong individual 
feeling, and with it a new warmth and directness of 
speech. These were William Cowper (i 731-1800) 
and Robert Burns (i 759-1 796). Cowper spoke out of 
his own life-experience, his agony, his love, his worship 
and despair ; and straightway the varnish that had 
glittered over all our poetry since the time of Dryden 
melted away. Cowper had scribbled verses when he wiiiiam 
was a young law student at the Middle Temple in '^°^p^''- 
London, and he had contributed to the "Olney 
Hymns," published in 1779 by his friend and pastor, 
the Rev. John Newton ; but he only began to write 
poetry in earnest when he was nearly fifty years oíd. 
In 1782, the date of his first volume, he said, in a letter 
to a friend, that he had read but one English poet 
during the past twenty years. Perhaps, therefore, of 
all English poets of equal culture, Cowper owed the 
least impulse to books and the most to the need of 
uttering his inmost thoughts and feelings. 



1 8o From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Cowper had a most unhappy Ufe. As a child he was 
shy, sensitive, and sickly, and suñered much from 
bullying and fagging at a school whither he was sent 
after his mother's death, This happened when he was 
six years oíd; and in his añecting lines written " On 
Receipt of My Mother's Picture," he speaks of himself 
as a 

Wretch even then, life's journey just begun. 

In 1763 he became insane and was sent to an asylum, 
Hisreiigious where he spent a year. Judicious treatment restored 

melancholy and ; , 

insaiiity. him to sanity, but he carne out a broken man and 

remained for the rest of his Ufe an invaHd, unfitted for 
any active occupation. His disease took the form of 
religious melancholy. He had two recurrences of mad- 
ness, and both times made attempts upon his life. At 
Huntingdon, and afterward at Olney, in Buckingham- 
shire, he found a home with the Unwin family, whose 
kindness did all which the most soothing and delicate 
care could do to heal his wounded spirit. His two 
poems "To Mary Urwin," together with the lines on 
his mother's picture, were almost the first examples of 
deep and tender sentiment in the lyrical poetry of the 
last century. Cowper found relief from the black 
thoughts that beset him only in an ordered round of 
quiet household occupations. He corresponded inde- 
fatigably, took long walks through the neighborhood, 
read, sang, and converscd with Mrs. Unwin and his 
friend Lady Austin, and amused himself with carpen- 
try, gardening, and raising pets, especially hares, of 
which gentle animáis he grew very fond. All these 
simple tastes, in which he found for a time a refuge and 
a sheltered happiness, are reflected in his best poem, 

"ThcTask." "The Task," 1785. 

Cowper is the poet of the family affections, of domes- 



From Death of Pope to ihe French Revolution. i8i 

tic Ufe, and rural retlrement ; the lauréate of the fire- 
side, the tea-table, the evening lamp, the garden, the 
greenhouse, and the rabbit-coop. He draws wlth ele- 
gance and precisión a chair, a clock, a harpsichord, a 
barometer, a piece of needle-work. But Cowper was 
an outdoor as well as an indoor man. The Olney 
landscape was tame, a flat, agricultural región, where 
the sluggish Ouse wound between plowed fields and the 
horizon was bounded by low hills. Nevertheless Cow- 
per' s natural descriptions are at once more distinct and 
more imaginative than Thomson' s. ''The Task" re- 
flects, also, the new philanthropic spirit, the enthu- 
siasm of humanity, the feeling of the brotherhood of 
men to which Rousseau had given expression in 
France, and which issued in the French Revolution, 
In England this was the time of Wilberforce, the anti- 
slavery agitator ; of Whitefield, the eloquent revíval 
preacher ; of John and Charles Wesley, and of the 
Evangelical and Methodist movements which gave new 
life to the English Church. John Newton, the cúrate of The poet of 
Olney and the keeper of Cowper' s conscience, was one phiiynthropy, 
of the leaders of the Evangelicals ; and Cowper' s first f¡'¿*^ '^^'^^'''^ 
volume of " Table Talk " and other poems, 1782, 
written under Newton' s inspiration, was a series of 
sermons in verse, somewhat intolerant of all worldly 
enjoyments, such as hunting, dancing, and theaters. 
" God made the country and man made the town," he 
wrote. He was a moralizing poet, and his morality 
was sometimes that of the invalid and the recluse. 
Byron called him a " coddled poet." And, indeed, 
there is a suspicion of gruel and dressing-gowns about 
him. He lived much among women, and his suffer- 
ings had refined him to a feminine delicacy. But there 
is no sickliness in his poetry, and he retained a charm- 



I82 



From Chaticer to Teíinyson. 



Scotch peasant 
life. 



ing playful humor — displayed in his excellent comic 
bailad "John Gilpin " ; and Mrs. Browning has sung of 
him, 

How, when ene by ene sweet sounds and wandering lights 

departed, 
He bore no less a loving face, because so broken-hearted. 

At the cióse of the year 1786 a young Scotchman, 
named Samuel Rose, called upon Cowper at Olney, and 
left with him a small volume, which had appeared at 
Edinburgh during the past summer, entitled ' ' Poems 
chiefly in the Scottish Dialect by Robert Burns." 
Cowper read the book through twice, and though 
somewhat bothered by the dialect, pronounced it a 
" very extraordinary production." This momentary 
flash, as of an electric spark, marks the contact not 
only of the two chief British poets of their generation, 
but of two literatures. Scotch poets, like Thomson 
and Beattie, had written in southern English, and, as 
Carlyle said, in vacuo, that is, with nothing specially 
national in their work. Burns' s sweet though rugged 
Doric first secured the vernacular poetry of his country 
a hearing beyond the border. He had, to be sure, a 
whole literature of popular songs and ballads behind 
him, and his immediate models were Alian Ramsay and 
Robert Ferguson ; but these remained provincial, while 
Burns became universal. 

He was born in Ayrshire, on the banks of " bonny 
Doon," in a clay biggin not far from " Alloway's auld 
haunted kirk," the scene of the witch dance in " Tam 
O'Shanter." His father was a hard-headed, God- 
fearing tenant farmer, whose life and that of his sons 
was a harsh struggle with poverty. The crops failed ; 
the landlord pressed for his rent ; for weeks at a time 
the family tasted no meat ; yet this life of toil was 



From Deaih of Pope to the Fre7ich Revohdion. 183 

lightened by love and homely pleasures. In ' ' The 

Cotter's Saturday Night" Burns has drawn a beautiful 

picture of his parents' household, the rest that carne at 

the week's end, and the family worship about the " wee 

bit ingle, bUnkin' bonnily." Robert was handsome, 

wild, and witty. He was universally susceptible, and 

his first songs, like his last, were of ' ' the lasses. ' ' His 

head had been stuffed, in boyhood, with ' ' tales and 

songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, 

witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead- 

lights," etc., told him by one Jenny Wilson, an oíd 

woman who lived in the family. His ear was full of 

ancient Scottish tunes, and as soon as he fell in love he 

began to make poetry as naturally as a bird sings. He Love songs. 

composed his verses while following the plow or working 

in the stack-yard ; or, at evening, balancing on two legs 

of his chair and watching the light of a peat fire play 

over the reeky walls of the cottage. Burns' s love songs 

are in many keys, ranging from strains of the most puré 

and exalted passion, like "Ae Fond Kiss " and " To 

Mary in Heaven," to such loóse ditties as " When 

Januar Winds" and "Green Grow the Rashes O." 

Burns liked a glass almost as well as a lass, and at 
Mauchline, where he carried on a farm with his brother 
Gilbert after their father's death, he began to seek a 
questionable relief from the pressure of daily toil and 
unkind fates in the convivialities of the tavern. There, 
among the wits of the Mauchline Club, farmers' sons, 
shepherds from the uplands, and the smugglers who 
swarmed over the west coast, he would discuss politics 
and farming, recite his verses, and join in the singing songs.'"^ 
and ranting, while 

Bousin o'er the nappy 

And gettin' fou and unco happy. 



1 84 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

To these experiences we owe not only those excellent 
drinking songs, "John Barleycorn" and "Willie 
Brewed a Peck o' Maut," but the headlong fun of 
"Tara O'Shanter," the visions, grotesquely terrible, of 
" Death and Dr. Hornbook," and the dramatic humor 
of "The Jolly Beggars." Cowper had celebrated " the 
cup which cheers but not inebriates." Burns sang the 
praises of ' ' Scotch Drink. ' ' Cowper was a stranger to 
Burns' s high animal spirits and his robust enjoyment of 
life. He had añections, but no passions. At Mauch- 
line, Burns, whose irregularities did not escape the 
censure of the kirk, became involved, through his 
friendship with Gavin Hamilton, in the controversy 
between the Oíd Light and New Light clergy, His 
"HolyFair," " Holy Tulzie," "TwaHerds," " Holy 

pfe¿¿?* ^ Willie' s Prayer," and "Address to the Unco Gude," 

are satires against bigotry and hypocrisy. But in spite 
of the roUicking profanity of his language, and the 
violence of his rebound against the austere religión of 
Scotland, Burns was at bottom deeply impressible by 
religious ideas, as may be seen from his ' ' Prayer under 
the Pressure of Violent Anguish ' ' and ' ' Prayer in 
Prospect of Death." 

His farm turned out a failure, and he was on the eve 
of sailing for Jamaica, when the favor with which his 
volume of poems was received stayed his departure and 

Edf?°^*h" turned his steps to Edinburgh. There the peasant 
poet was lionized for a winter season by the learned 
and polite society of the Scotch capital, with results in 
the end not altogether favorable to Burns' s best in- 
terests. For when society finally turned the cold 
shoulder on him he had to go back to farming again, 
carrying with him a bitter sense of injustice and neglect. 
He leased a farm at Ellisland, in 1788, and some 



< 


» 


'•""'^if^L 


JOHNSON. 


60LDSMITH. 1 


1 






Lj 


^COWPER. 



From Death of Pope to the Fre?ich Revolution. 185 

friends procured his appointment as exciseman for his 
district. But poverty, disappointment, irregular habits, 
and broken health clouded his last years, and brought 
him to an untimely death at the age of thirty-seven. 
He continued, however, to pour forth songs of un- 
equaled sweetness and forcé. "The man sank," said 
Coleridge, "but the poet was bright to the last." 

Burns is the best of British song-writers. His songs 
are singable ; they are not merely lyrical poems. They 
were meant to be sung, and they are sung, They hís supremacy 

° ^ ° . -^ as a song- 

were mostly set to oíd Scottish airs, and sometimes writer. 
they were built up from ancient fragments of anonymous 
popular poetry, a chorus, or stanza, or even a single 
line. Such are, for example, "Auld Lang Syne," " My 
Heart's in the Highlands," and " Landlady, Count 
the Lawin'." Burns had a great, warm heart. His 
sins were sins of passion, and sprang from the same 
generous soil that nourished his impulsive virtues. His 
elementary qualities as a poet were sincerity, a healthy 
openness to all impressions of the beautiful, and a 
sympathy which embraced men, animáis, and the dumb 
objects of nature. His tenderness toward flowers and 
the brute creation may be read in his lines " To a 
Mountain Daisy," " To a Mouse," and "The Auld 
Farmer's New Year's Morning Salutation to his Auld 
Mare Maggie." 

Next after love and good-fellowship, patriotism is the 
most frequent motive of his song. Of his national an- 
them, " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," Carlyle said : 
"So long as there is warm blood in the heart of Scotch- 
man, or man, it will move in fierce thrills under this war 
ode." Burns' s politics were a singular mixture of senti- 
mental Toryism with practical democracy. A romantic 
glamour was thrown over the fortunes of the exiled 



1 86 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Stuarts, and to have been "out" in '45 with the 
Young Pretender was a popular thing in parts of Scot- 
land. To this purely poetic loyalty may be attributed 
Hispoiitics. such Jacobite ballads of Burns's as " Over the Water to 
Charlie." But his sober convictions were on the side 
of liberty and human brotherhood, and are expressed in 
"The Twa Dogs," "The First Epistle to Davie," and 
"A Man's a Man for a' that." His sympathy with the 
Revolution led him to send four pieces of ordnance, 
taken from a captured smuggler, as a present to the 
French Convention, a piece of bravado which got him 
into difficulties with his superiors in the excise. The 
poetry which Burns wrote, not in dialect, but in the 
classical English, is in the stilted manner of his century, 
and his prose correspondence betrays his lack of cul- 
ture by ¡ts constant lapse into rhetorical affectation and 
fine writing. 



1. James Thomson : "The Castle of Indolence." 

2. "The Poems of Thomas Gray.*' 

3. WiLLiAM CoLLiNS : "Odes." 

4. ' ' The Six Chief Lives from Johnson' s ' Lives of the 
Poets.' " Edited by Matthew Arnold. London : 1878. 

5. BoswELL : " Life of Johnson " [abridged]. New 
York : 1878. 

6. Samuel RiCHARDSON : " Clarissa Harlowe. " 

7. Henry FiELDiNG : "Tom Jones." 

8. Tobías Smollett : " Humphrey Clinker. " 

9. Laurence Sterne : " Tristram Shandy." 

10. Oliver Goldsmith : "The Vicar of Wake- 
field ' ' and ' ' The Deserted Village. ' ' 

11. WiLLiAM Cowper: "The Task" and "John 
Gilpin." 

12. "The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns." 



CHAPTER VII. 

FrOM THE FrENCH ReVOLUTION TO THE DeATH 
OF SCOTT, 1789-1832. 

The burst of creativa activity at the opening of the 
nineteenth century has but one parallel in English productivjty of 
literary history, namely, the somewhat similar flowering- periolí"^^'^" 
out of the national genius in the time of EHzabeth and 
the first two Stuart kings. The later age gave birth to 
no supreme poets, like Shakspere and Milton. It pro- 
duced no "Hamlet" and no " Paradise Lost"; but it 
ofíers a greater number of important writers, a higher 
average of excellence, and a wider range and variety of 
Hterary work than any preceding era. Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats are all 
great ñames ; while Southey, Landor, Moore, Lamb, 
and De Quincey would be noteworthy figures at any 
period, and deserve a fuUer mention than can be here 
accorded them. But in so crowded a generation, 
selection becomes increasingly needful, and in the 
present chapter, accordingly, the emphasis will be laid 
upon the first-named group as not only the most impor- 
tant, but the most representative of the various tenden- 
cies of their time. 

The conditions of Hterary work in this century have 
been almost unduly stimulating. The rapid advance in 
population, wealth, education, and the means of com- 
munication has vastly increased the number of readers. ^adrev^wl. 
Every one who has anything to say can say it in print, 
and is sure of some sort of a hearing. A special 
187 



Froni Chaucer to Tennyson. 



The 
Edinburgh. 



The 
Quarterfy. 



feature of the time is the multiplication of periodicals. 
The great London dailies, like the Times and the 
Morning Posi, which were started during the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century, were something 
quite new in journaHsm. The first of the modern 
reviews, the Edinburgh, was estabUshed in 1802, as 
the organ of the Whig party in Scotland. This was 
followed by the London Quarter ly, in 1808, and by 
Blackwood' s MagazÍ7ie, in 181 7, both in the Tory 
interest. The first editor of the Edinburgh was Francis 
Jeffrey, who assembled about him a distinguished corps 
of contributors, including the versatile Henry Brougham, 
afterward a great parhamentary orator and lord chan- 
cellor of England, and the Rev. Sydney Smith, whose 
witty sayings are still current. The first editor of 
the Quarterly was WiUiam Giñord, a satirist, who wrote 
the ' ' Baviad ' ' and ' ' Maeviad ' ' in ridicule of literary 
aííectations. He was succeeded in 1824 by John Gib- 
son Lockhart, the son-in-law of Walter Scott, and 
the author of an excellent ' ' Life of Scott. ' ' Black- 
wood' s v^as edited by John Wilson, professor of moral 
philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who, under 
the pen-name of "Christopher North," contributed to 
his magazine a series of brilliant imaginary dialogues 
between famous characters of the day, entitled ' ' Noctes 
Ambrosianae," because they were supposed to take 
place at Ambrose's tavern in Edinburgh. These papers 
were full of a profuse, headlong eloquence, of humor, 
literary criticism, and personalities, interspersed with 
songs expressive of a roystering and convivial Toryism 
and an uproarious contempt for Whigs and cockneys. 
These reviews and magazines, and others which 
sprang up beside them, became the nuclei about which 
the wit and scholarship of both parties gathered. 



From French Revolution to ihe Death of Scott. 1 89 

Political controversy under the Regency and the reign 
of George IV. was thus carried on more regularly by 
permanent organs, and no longer so largely by priva- 
teering, in the shape of pamphlets, like Swift's " Con- 
ductof the Allies," Johnson' s "Taxation No Tyranny," 
and Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." 
Ñor did poHtics by any means usurp the columns of the 
reviews. Literature, art, science, the whole circle of 
human effort and achievement passed under review. 
Blackwood' s, Fraser's, and the other monthlies pub- 
lished stories, poetry, criticism, and correspondence — 
everything, in short, which enters into the make-up of 
our magazines to-day except illustrations. 

Two main influences, of foreign origin, have left their 
trace in the English writers of the first thirty years of 
the nineteenth century, the one communicated by con- Newliterary 
tact with the new Germán Hterature of the latter half of Germany. 
the eighteenth century, and in particular with the 
writings of Goethe, Schiller, and Kant ; the other 
springing from the events of the French Revolution. 
The influence of Germán upon English literature in the 
nineteenth century was more intellectual and less formal 
than that of the Italian in the sixteenth and of the 
French in the eighteenth. In other words, the Germán 
writers furnished the English with ideas and ways of 
feeling rather than with models of style. Goethe and 
Schiller did not become subjects for literary imitation as 
Moliere, Racine, and Boileau had become in Pope's 
time. It was reserved for a later generation and for 
Thomas Carlyle to domestícate the diction of Germán 
prose. But the nature and extent of this influence can, 
perhaps, best be noted when we come to take up the 
authors of the time one by one. 

The excitement caused by the French Revolution was 



190 From. Chaucer to Tennyson. 

somcthing- more obvious and immediate. When the 
Bastile fell, in 1789, the enthusiasm among the h'iends 
of liberty and human progress in England was hardly 
less intense than in France. It was the dawn of a new 
day ; the shackles were stricken from the slave ; all 
men were frce and all men were brothers, and radical 
EtTect of the young England sent up a shout that echocd the roar of 
Revohuionon the Parls mob. Wordsworth's Unes on "The Fall of 
wrkers! the Bastile, " Coleridgc's "Fall of Robespierre" and 

" Ode to France," and Southey's revolutionary drama, 
"Wat Tyler," gave expression to the hopes and 
aspirations of the English democracy. In after Ufe, 
Wordsvvorth, looking back regretfuUy to those years of 
promise, wrote his poem on "The French Revolution 
as it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement." 

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive ; 
But to be young was very heaven. O times 
In vvhicli íhe meager, stale, forbidding ways 
Of custoni, lavv, and statute took at once 
The attraction of a country ¡n romance. 

Those were the days in which Wordsworth, then an 
undergraduate at Cambridge, spent a college vacation 
in tramping through France, landing at Calais on the 
eve of the very day (July 14, 1790) on which Louis 
XVI. signalized the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile 
by tuking the oath of fidelity to the new constitution. 
In the following year Wordsworth revisited France, 
where he spent thirteen months forming an intimacy 
with the republican general, Beaupuis, at Orleans, and 
reaching Paris not long after the September massacres 
of 1792. 

Those were the days, too, in which young Southey 
and young Coleridge, having married sisters at Bristol, 
were planning a " Pantisocracy," or ideal community, 



From Frenck Revolution to the Deaih of Scott. 191 

on the banks of the Susquehannah, and denouncing the 
British governmcnt for going to war with the French 
Republic. This group of poets, who had met one 
another first in the south of England, carne afterward to 
be called the "Lake Poets," from their residence in tlie The "Lake 
mountainous lake country of Westmoreland and Cum- ^"'^'^•" 
bcrland, with which thcir ñames, and that of Words- 
worth, especially, are forever associatcd. The so-called 
" Lakers " did not, properly speaking, constitute a 
school of poctry. They diíTered greatly from one an- 
other in mind and art. But they were connected by 
social ties and by religious and political sympathies. 
The excesses of the French Revolution and the usur- 
pation of Napoleón disappointed them, as it did many 
other English liberáis, and drove them into the ranks 
of the reactionaries. Advancing years brought con- 
servatism, and they became in time loyal Tories and 
orthüdox churchmen. 

William Wordsworth (i 770-1 850), the chief of the 
three, and, perhaps, on the whole, the greatest Eng- vviiiiam 
lish poet since Milton, published his " Lyrical Ballads " ^d'tliT'"'*'' 
in 1798. The volume contained a few pieces by his ga^fads^.l 
friend Coleridge — aniong them "The Ancient Mariner" 
— and its appearance may fairly be said to mark an 
epoch in the history of English poetry. Wordsworth 
regarded himself as a reformer of poetry ; and in the 
preface to the second edition of the " Lyrical Ballads " 
he defended the theory on which they were composed. 
His innovations were twofold : in subject-matter and in 
diction. "The principal object which I proposed to 
myself in these poems," he said, " was to choose inci- 
dents and situations from common life. Low and rustió 
life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, 
the essential passions of the hcart find a better soil in 



poetic diction. 



192 Froni Cha7icer to Tennyson. 

which they can attain their maturity . . . and are 
incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of 
nature. ' ' Wordsworth discarded, in theory, the poetic 
diction of his predecessors, and professed to use "a 
selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid 
sensation." He adopted, he said, the language of men 
in rustic life, "because such men hourly communicate 
with the best objects from which the best part of lan- 
guage is originally derived." 

In the matter of poetic diction Wordsworth did not, 
in his practice, adhere to the doctrine of this preface. 
His reform of Many of his most admired poems, such as the ' ' Lines 
written near Tintern Abbey, " the great " Ode on the 
Intimations of Immortality," the "Sonnets," and many 
parts of his longest poems, ' ' The Excursión ' ' and 
"The Prelude," deal with philosophic thought and 
highly intellectualized emotions. In all of these and in 
many others the language is rich, stately, in volved, and 
as remote from the ' ' real language ' ' of Westmoreland 
shepherds as is the epic blank verse of Milton. On the 
other hand, in those of his poems which were con- 
sciously written in illustration of his theory, the aíTecta- 
tion of simplicity, coupled with a defective sense of 
humor, sometimes led him to the selection of vulgar 
and trivial themes, and the use of language which is 
bald, childish, or even ludicrous. His simplicity is too 
often the simplicity of Mother Goose rather than of 
Chaucer. Instances of this occur in such poems as 
"Peter Bell," "The Idiot Boy," " Goody Blake and 
Harry Gilí," "Simón Lee," and "The Wagoner." 
But there are multitudes of Wordsworth' s ballads and 
lyrics which are simple without being silly, and which, 
in their homeliness and clear profundity, in their pro- 
duction of the strongest efiects by the fewest strokes, 



His quietism. 



From French Revolütion to the Death of Scott. 193 

are among the choicest modern examples of p2ire, as 
distinguished from decorated, art, Such are (out of 
many) "Ruth," "Lucy," " She was a Phantom of De- 
light," "Toa Highland Girl," "The Reverie of Poor 
Susan," " To the Cuckoo," "The Solitary Reaper," 
" We Are Seven," "The Pet Lamb," "The Fountain," 
"The Two April Mornings," " Resolution and Inde- 
pendence," " Stepping Westward," and " Yarrow Un- 
visited." 

Wordsworth was something of a Quaker in poetry, 
and loved the sober drabs and grays of hfe. Quietism 
was his Hterary religión, and the sensational was to him 
not merely vulgar, but almost wicked. "The human 
mind," he wrote, " is capable of being excited without 
the application of gross and violent stimulants." He 
disliked the far-fetched themes and high-colored style of 
Scott and Byron. He once told Landor that all of 
Scott' s poetry together was not worth sixpence. From 
action and passion he turned away to sing the inward 
life of the soul and the outward life of nature. He said : 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

And again : 

Long have I loved what I behold. 

The nightrthat charms, the day that cheers r 

The common growth of mother earth 

Suffices me — her tears, her mirth, 

Her humblest mirth and tears. 

Wordsworth' s life was outwardly uneventful. The 
companionship of the mountains and of his own ^aracteT** 
thoughts, the sympathy of his household, the lives of 
the dalesmen and cottagers about him furnished him 
with all the stimulus that he required. 



194 Ff'om Chazíce?' to Tennyson. 

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 

His only teachers had been woods and rills, 
The silence that is in the starry sky, 

The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 

He read little, but reflected much, and made poetry 

daily, composing, by preference, out of doors, and 

dictating his verses to some member of his family. His 

His sister favorite amanuensis was his sister Dorothy, a woman of 

Dorothy. _ _ •' ' 

fine gifts, to whom Wordsworth was indebted for some 
of his happiest inspirations. Her charming ' ' Memori- 
als of a Tour in the Scottish Highlands ' ' records the 
origin of many of her brother's best poems. Through- 
out hfe Wordsworth was remarkably self-centered. 
The ridicule of the reviewers, against which he gradu- 
ally made his way to public recognition, never dis- 
turbed his serene beUef in himself, or in the divine 
message which he felt himself commissioned to deUver. 
He was a slow and serious person, a preacher as well as 
His limitations. ^ poet, with a certain rigidity, not to say narrowness, of 
character. That plástic temperament which we asso- 
ciate with poetic genius Wordsworth either did not 
possess, or it hardened early. Whole sides of life were 
beyond the range of his sympathies. He touched life 
at fewer points than Byron and Scott, but touched it 
more profoundly. It is to him that we owe the phrase 
"plain living and high thinking," as also a most noble 
illustration of it in his own practice. His was the 
wisest and deepest spirit among the English poets of his 
generation, though hardly the most poetic. He wrote 
too much, and, attempting to make every petty inci- 
dent or reflection the occasion of a poem, he finally 
reached the point of composing verses ' ' On Seeing a 
Harp in the shape of a Needle Case," and on other 
themes more worthy of Mrs. Sigourney. In parts of 



Froví French Revolution to the Deatk of Scott. 195 

his long blank-verse poems, "The Excursión," 18 14, 
and "The Prelude" — which was printed after his death 
in 1850, though finished as early as 1806 — the poetry 
wears very thin and its place is taken by prosaic, 
tedious didacticism. These two poems were designed 
as portions of a still more extended work, "The 
Recluse," which was never completed. " The Excur- "The 

.... Excursión. 

sion" consists mainly of philosophical discussions on 
nature and human life between a schoolmaster, a soli- 
tary, and an itinerant peddler. ' ' The Prelude ' ' de- 
scribes the development of Wordsworth' s own genius. 
In parts of "The Excursión" the diction is fairly 
Shaksperian : 

The good die first, 
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
Burn to the socket ; 

a passage not only beautiful in itself but dramatically 
true to that human instinct which generalizes a prívate 
sorrow into a universal law. Much of " The Prelude" "ThePreiud 
can hardly be called poetry at all, yet some of Words- 
worth' s loftiest poetry is buried among its dreary wastes, 
and now and then, in the midst of commonplaces, 
comes a flash of Miltonic spendor — like 

Golden cities ten months' journey deep 
Among Tartarian wilds. 

Wordsworth is, above all things, the poet of nature. 
In this province he was not without forerunners. To wordsworth 
say nothing of Burns and Cowper, there was George nature''' °^ 
Crabbe, who had published his "Village" in 1783 — 
fifteen years before the " Lyrical Ballads " — and whose 
last poem, "Tales of the Hall," carne out in 1819, five 
years after ' ' The Excursión. ' ' Byron called Crabbe 
" Nature' s sternest painter, and her best." He was a 



196 



Ff'om Chaucer lo Tennyson. 



His minute 
delineation. 



His mysticism. 



minutely accurate delineator of the harsher aspects of 
rural life. He photographs a gypsy camp ; a common, 
with its geese and donkey ; a salt marsh, a shabby 
village Street, or tumble-down manse. But neither 
Crabbe ñor Cowper has the imaginative lift of Words- 
worth, 

The light that nevar was, on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the poet's dream. 

In a note on a couplet in one of his earliest poems, 
descriptive of an oak-tree standing darle against the 
sunset, Wordsworth says : " I recollect distinctly the 
very spot where this struck me. The moment was 
important in my poetical history, for I date from it my 
consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appear- 
ances vvhicli had been unnoticed by the poets of any 
age or country, and I made a resolution to supply, in 
some degree, the deficiency." In later life he is said 
to have been impatient of anything spoken or written 
by another about mountains, conceiving himself to have 
a monopoly of "the power of hills." But Words- 
worth did not stop with natural description. Matthew 
Arnold has said that the office of modern poetry is the 
"moral interpretation of nature." Such, at any rate, 
was Wordsworth' s office. To him nature was alive 
and divine. He felt, under the veil of phenomena, 

A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thought : a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused. 

He approached, if he did not actually reach, the view of 
pantheism which identifies God with nature ; and the 
mysticism of the idealists, who identify nature with the 
soul of man. This tendency was not inspired in Words- 
worth by Germán philosophy. He was no meta- 
physician. In his rambles with Coleridge about Nether 



Froví French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 197 

Stowey and Alfoxden, when both were young, they 
had, indeed, discussed Spinoza. And in the autumn of 
1798, after the publication of the " Lyrical Ballads," 
the two friends went together to Germany, where 
Wordsworth spent half a year. But the Hterature and 
philosophy of Germany made little direct impression 
upen Wordsworth. He disHked Goethe, and he quoted 
with approval the saying of the poet Klopstock, whom 
he met at Hamburg, that he placed the romanticist 
Bürger above both Goethe and Schiller. 

It was through Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772- 
\Z\\), who was preéminently the thiyiker among the Samuel Taylor 

i. f 1 . . , , ^ Coleridge. 

literary men of his generation, that the new Germán 
thought found its way into England. During the four- 
teen months which he spent in Germany — chiefly at 
Ratzburg and Góttingen — he had familiarized himself 
with the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant 
and of his continuators, Fichte and Schelhng, as well as 
with the general literature of Germany. On his return 
to England he published, in 1800, a free translation of 
Schiller' s " Wallenstein," and through his writings, 
and more especially through his conversations, he be- 
came the conductor by which Germán philosophic ideas 
reached the English literary class. 

Coleridge described himself as being from boyhood a 
bookworm and a day dreamer. He remained through 
life an omnivorous, though unsystematic, reader. He 

• 1 n- • 11- • -11 ^'^ peculiar- 

was helpless in practical añairs, and his native indolence ities. 
and procrastination were increased by his indulgence in 
the opium habit. On his return to England, in 1800, 
he went to reside at Keswick, in the Lake Country, 
with his brother-in-law, Southey, whose industry sup- 
ported both families. During his last nineteen years 
Coleridge found an asylum under the roof of Mr. James 



198 



From Chaucer io Tennyson. 



Gilman, of Highgate, near London, whither niany of 
the best young men \\\ England were accustomed to 
resort to listen to Coleridge's wonderful talk. Talk, 
indeed, was the médium through which he mainly 
influenced his generation. It cost him an effort to put 
his thoughts oa paper. His "TableTalk" — crowded 
with pregnant paragraphs — was taken down from his 
Hps by his nephew, Henry Coleridge. His criticisms of 
Shakspere are nothing but notes, made here and there, 
from a course of lectures delivered before the Royal 
Institute, and never fuUy written out. Though only 
hints and suggestions, they are, perhaps, the most 
penetrative and helpful Shaksperian criticisms in Eng- 
lish. He was ahvays forming projects and abandoning- 
them. He projected a great work on Christian phi- 
losophy, which was to have been his viagnum opus, but 
he never wrote it. He projected an epic poem on the 
fall of Jerusalem. "I schemed it at twenty-five," he 
said, "but, alas! vcnturiim cxpcctaty What bade 
fair to be his best poem, "Christabel," is a fragment. 
Another strangely beautiful poem, " Kubla Khan" — 
which came to him, he said, in sleep — is even more 
fragmentary. And the most important of his prose 
remains, his " Biographia Literaria," 1817, a history of 
his own opinions, breaks off abruptly. 

It was in his suggestiveness that Coleridge's great 
service to posterity resided. He was what J. S. Mili 
called a "seminal mind," and his thought liad that 
power of stimulating thought in others which is the 
mark and the privilege of original genius. Many a 
man has owed to some sentence of Coleridge's, if not 
the awakening in himself of a new intellectual life, at 
least the starting of fruitful trains of reflection which 
have modified his whole view of certain great subjects. 



From French Revolution to ihe Death of Scott. 199 

On everything ihat he left ¡s set the stamp of high 
mental authority. He was not, perhaps, primarily, he 
certainly was not exclusively, a poet. In theology, in 
philosophy, in political thought and literary criticism he j^fl'"jfj,^^'^„ 
set currents flowing which are flowing yet. The termi- ^"^''?^ 
nology of criticism, for example, is in his debt for many 
of those convenient distinctions — such as that between 
genius and talent, between wit and humor, between 
fancy and imagination — which are familiar enough now, 
but which he first introduced or enforced. His defi- 
nitions and apothcgms we meet everywhere. Such are, 
for example, the sayings : " Every man is born an 
Aristotelian or a Platonist." " Prose is words in their 
best ordcr ; poetry, the best words in the bestorder." 
And among the bits of subtle interpretation that abound 
in his writings may be mentioned his estimate of 
Wordsworth, in the " Biographia Literaria," and his 
sketch of Hamlet's character — one with which he was 
personally in strong sympathy — in the " Lectures on 
Shakspere. ' ' 

The Broad Church party, in the English Church, -pheBroad 
among whose most eminent exponents have been W. Church. 
Frederic Robertson, Arnold of Rugby, F. D. Maurice, 
Charles Kingsley, and the late Dean Stanley, traces its 
intellectual origin to Coleridge's "Aids to Reflection," 
to his writings and conversations in general, and par- 
ticularly to his ideal of a national clerisy, as set forth in 
his essay on "Church and State." In politics, as in 
religión, Coleridge's conservatism represents the re- 
action against the destructive spirit of the eighteenth 
century and the French Revolution. To this root-and- 
branch democracy he opposed the view that every oíd 
belief, or institution, such as the throne or the church, ^í''''''^^^ 

' ' ' philosophy. 

had served some need, and had a rational idea at the 



From Chaucer to Tefuiyson. 



bottom of it, to which it might be again recalled, and 
made once more a benefit to society, instead of a curse 
and an anachronism. 

As a poet, Coleridge has a sure, though slender, 
hold upon immortal fame. No English poet has ' ' sung 
"Christabei." SO wildly well ' ' as the singer of ' ' Christabel ' ' and 
"The Ancient Mariner." The former of these is in 
form a romance in a variety of meters, and in sub- 
stance a tale of supernatural possession, by which a 
lovely and innocent maiden is brought under the con- 
trol of a witch. Though unfinished and obscura in 
intention, it haunts the imagination with a mystic 
power. Byron had seen ' ' Christabel ' ' in nianuscript, 
and urged Coleridge to publish it. He hated all the 
"Lakers," but when, on parting from Lady Byron, he 
wrote his song, 

Fare thee well, and if forever, 
Still forever fare thee well, 

he prefixed to it the noble Unes from Coleridge' s poem, 
beginning 

Alas ! they had been friends in youth. 

In that weird bailad, "The Ancient Mariner," the 
Mariner." supematural is handled with even greater subtlety than 

in ' ' Christabel. ' ' The reader is led to feel that amid 
the loneliness of the tropic sea the line between the 
earthly and the unearthly vanishes, and the poet leaves 
him to discover for himself whether the spectral shapes 
that the mariner saw were merely the visions of the 
calenture, or a glimpse of the world of spirits. Cole- 
ridge is one of our most perfect metrists. The poet 
Swinburne — than whom there can be no higher author- 
ity on this point (though he is rather given to exagger- 
ation) — pronounces " Kubla Khan," "for absolute 



From French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 201 

melody and splendor, the first poem in the language." 
Robert Southey, the third member of this group, was 
a dihgent worker, and one of the most voluminous of southey. 
EngHsh writers. As a poet, he was lacking in inspira- 
tion, and his big oriental epics, "Thalaba," 1801, and 
"The Curse of Kehama," i8ro, are little better than 
waxwork. Of his numerous works in prose, the " Life 
of Nelson " is, perhaps, the best, and is an excellent 
biography. 

Several other authors were more or less closely asso- 
ciated with the Lake Poets by residence or social 
affiliation. John Wilson, the editor of Blackwood' s, johnWiison. 
lived for some time, when a young man, at EUeray, on 
the banks of Windermere. He was an athletic man of 
outdoor habits, an enthusiastic sportsman, and a lover 
of natural scenery. His admiration of Wordsworth 
was thought to have led him to imitation of the latter 
in his " Isle of Palms," 181 2, and his other poetry. 

One of Wilson' s companions in his mountain walks 
was Thomas De Quincey, who had been led by his 
reverence for Wordsworth and Coleridge to take up his 
residence, in 1808, at Grasmere, where he occupied for 
many years the cottage from which Wordsworth had 
removed to Alian Bank. De Quincey was a shy, 
bookish man, of erratic, nocturnal habits, who im- 
presses one, personally, as a child of genius, with a 
child's íhelplessness and a child' s sharp observation. 
He wás, above all things, a magazinist, AU his 
writings, with one exception, appeared first in the shape 
of contributions to periodicals ; and his essays, literary 
criticisms, and miscellaneous papers are exceedingly 
rich and varied. The most famous of them was his 
" Conféssions of an English Opium Eater," published V,^^^^^^^^^'^ 
as a serial in the Londo7i Magazine, in 1821. He had Eater." 



From Chaucer to Tenjiyson. 



Its origin. 



"Vision of 
Sudden Death.' 



begun to take opium, as a cure for the toothache, when 
a student at Oxford, where he resided from 1803 to 
1808. By 1816 he had risen to eight thousand drops of 
laudanum a day. For several years after this he ex- 
perienced the acutest misery, and his will suñered an 
entire paralysis. In 1821 he succeeded in reducing 
his dose to a comparatively small allowance, and in 
shaking off his torpor so as to become capable of 
Hterary work. The most impressive effect of the opium 
habit was seen in his dreams, in the unnatural expan- 
sión of space and time, and the infinite repetition of the 
same objects. His sleep was filled vvith dim, vast 
images ; measureless cavalcades deploying to the sound 
of orchestral music ; an endless succession of vaulted 
halls, with staircases climbing to heaven, up which 
toiled eternally the same sohtary figure. ' ' Then came 
sudden alarms, hurrying to and fro ; trepidations of 
innumerable fugitives ; darkness and hght ; tempest and 
human faces." 

Many of De Quincey's papers were autobiographical, 
but there is ahvays something baffling in these remi- 
niscences. In the interminable wanderings of his pen — 
for which, perhaps, opium was responsible — he appears 
to lose all trace of facts or of any continuous story. 
Every actual experience of his life seems to have been 
taken up into a realm of dream, and there distorted till 
the reader sees not the real figures, but the enormous, 
grotesque shadows of them, executing wild dances on a 
screen. An instance of this process is described by 
himself in his "Vision of Sudden Death." But his 
unworldliness and faculty of vision-seeing were not in- 
consistent with the keenness of judgment and the just- 
ness and delicacy of perception displayed in his ' ' Bio- 
graphical Sketches" of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 



From. French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 203 

other contemporaries ; in his critical papers on "Pope," 

"Milton," "Lessing," " Homer and the Homeridae " ; 

his essay on ' ' Style ' ' ; and his ' ' Brief Appraisal of the 

Greek Literatura." His curious scholarship is seen in 

his articles on ' ' The Toilet of a Hebrew Lady ' ' and the 

" Casuistry of Román Meáis"; his ironical and some- 

what elabórate humor in his essay on ' ' Murder Con- 

sidered as One of the Fine Arts." Of his narrative 

pieces the most remarkable is his ' ' Revolt of the « Revoit of 

Tartars," describing the flight of a Kalmuck tribe of theXartars." 

six hundred thousand souls from Russia to the Chínese 

frontier : a great hegira or anabasis, which extended 

for four thousand miles over desert steppes infested 

with foes, occupied six months' time, and left nearly 

half of the tribe dead upon the way. The subject was 

suited to De Quincey's imagination. It was like one of 

his own opium visions, and he handled it with a dignity 

and forcé which make the history not altogether un- 

worthy of comparison with Thucydides's great chapter 

on the Sicilian Expedition. 

An intímate friend of Southey was Walter Savage 
Landor, a man of kingly nature, of a leonine presence, Landorf*^^^^ 
with a most stormy and unreasonable temper, and yet 
with the courtliest graces of manner, and with — said 
Emerson — "a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, and 
inexhaustible." He inherited wealth, and lived a great 
part of his life at Florence, where he died in 1864, in 
his ninetieth year, Dickens, who knew him at Bath 
in the latter part of his life, made a kindly caricature of 
him as Lawrence Boythorn in " Bleak House," whose 
"combination of superficial ferocity and inherent tender- 
ness," testifies Henry Crabb Robinson, in his "Diary," 
was true to the Hfe. Landor is the most purely classi- 
cal of English writers. Not merely his themes, but his 



204 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



His classicism. 



" Pericles and 
Aspasia." 



" Imaginary 

Conversa- 

tions." 



whole way of thinking was pagan and antique. He 
composed indifíerently in English or Latin, preferring 
the latter, if anything, in obedience to his instinct for 
compression and exclusiveness. Thus, portions of his 
narrative poem, "Gebir," 1798, were written originally 
in Latin and he added a Latin versión, " Gebirius," to 
the English edition. In like manner his "Hellenics," 
1847, were mainly translations from his Latin " IdylUa 
Heroica," written years before. The Hellenic clearness 
and repose which were absent from his life Landor 
sought in his art. His poems, in their restraint, their 
objectivity, their aloofness from modern feeling, have 
something chill and artificial. The verse of poets like 
Bryon and Wordsworth is alive ; the blood runs in it. 
But Landor' s polished, clean-cut intaglios have been 
well described as "written in marble." He was a 
master of fine and solid prose. His "Pericles and 
Aspasia ' ' consists of a series of letters passing between 
the great Athenian demagogue ; the hetaira, Aspasia ; 
her friend, Cleone of Miletus ; Anaxagorus, the phi- 
losopher, and Pericles' s nephew, Alcibiades. In this 
masterpiece the intellectual life of Athens, at its period 
of highest refinement, is brought before the reader with 
singular vividness, and he is made to breathe an atmos- 
phere of high-bred grace, delicate wit, and thoughtful 
sentiment, expressed in English " of Attic choice." 
The "Imaginary Conversations," 1824-46, were Pla- 
tonic dialogues between a great variety of historical 
characters ; between, for example, Dante and Beatrice, 
Washington and Franklin, Queen Elizabeth and Cecil, 
Xenophon and Cyrus the Younger, Bonaparte and the 
president of the Senate. Landor' s writings have never 
been popular ; they address an aristocracy of scholars ; 
and Byron — whom Landor disliked and considered 



From Fre7ich Revolution to the Death of Scott. 205 

vulgar — sneered at him as a writer who ' ' cultivated 
much prívate renown in the shape of Latín verses." 
He saíd of hímself that he " never contended with a 
contemporary, but walked alone on the far eastern 
uplands, medítatíng and rememberíng. " 

A schoolmate of Colerídge at Chríst's Hospital, and 
hís fríend and correspondent through Ufe, was Charles 
Lamb, one of the most charmíng of Englísh essayísts. 
He was a bachelor, who líved alone wíth hís síster 
Mary, a lovable and intellectual woman, but subject to 
recurring attacks of madness. Lamb was ' * a notched 
and cropped scrivener, a votary of the desk " ; a clerk, 
that ís, ín the employ of the East India Company. He 
was of antíquarían tastes, an ardent playgoer, a lover of 
whist and of the London streets ; and these tastes are 
reflected ín hís " Essays of Ella," contríbuted to the Charles Lamb's 

. . " Essays of 

London Magazine and repnnted in book form in 1823. Eüa." 
From hís mousíng among the Elízabethan dramatísts 
and such oíd humorísts as Burton and Fuller, hís own 
style imbíbed a peculiar quaíntness and pungency. 
His "Specimens of Englísh Dramatic Poets," 1808, is 
admirable for íts crítical ínsight. In 1802 he paid a 
vísit to Colerídge at Keswíck, ín the Lake Country ; 
but he felt or affected a whímsical horror of the moun- 
tains, and said, ' ' Fleet Street and the Strand are better 
to líve in." Among the best of his essays are " Dream 
Children," " Poor Relations," "The Artificial Comedy 
of the Last Century," "Oíd China," " Roast Pig," 
' 'A Defense of Chimney-sweeps, " "A Complaínt of the 
Decay of Beggars ín the Metrópolis," and "The Oíd 
Benchers of the Inner Temple." 

The romantic movement, preluded by Gray, CoUíns, 
Chatterton, Macpherson, and others, culmínated in 
Walter Scott (1721-1832). Hís passion for the medí- WaiterScott. 



2o6 From Chaucer io Tennyson. 

eval was excited by reading Percy's " Reliques" when 
he was a boy ; and in one of his school themes he 
maintained that Ariosto was a greater poet than Homer. 
iiiseaucaiioii. He bcgaii early to coUect manuscript ballads, suits of 
armor, piceos of oíd píate, border-horns, and similar 
relies. He learned Italian in order to read the 
romancers — Ariosto, Tasso, Pulci, and Boiardo — pre- 
ferring thom to Dante. He studied Gothic architee- 
turc, heraldry, and the art of fortification, and made 
drawings of famous ruins and battlcfields. In jjar- 
tieiilar he read eagerly everything that he could lay 
hands on relating to the history, Icgends, and antiquities 
of the Scottish bordor — the vale of Twced, Tcviotdalc, 
Ettriek Forest, and the Yarrow, of all which land he 
became the lauréate, as Burns liad been of Ayrshire 
and the "West Country." 

Scott, likc Wordsworth, was an outdoor i)oot. He 
spcnt much time in the saddle, antl was fond of horses, 
dogs, hunting, and salmon-fishing. He had a keen eye 
for the beauties of natural scenery, though ' ' more es- 
pecially," he admits, "when combined with aneient 
ruins or remains of our forefathers* piety or splendor. ' ' 
He had the historie imagination, and, in creating the his- 
' The torical novel, he was the first to throw a poctic glamour 

loyaiof "^"^ over European annals. In 1S03 Wordsworth visitcd 
Scott at Lasswadc, ncar Edinburgh ; and Scott afterward 
returncd the visit at Grasmere. Wordsworth notcd that 
his guest was " full of aneedote, and avorse from dis- 
quisition." Tlic Englishman was a moralist and much 
givcn to " disciuisition," while the Scotchman was, 
above all things, a raco7ití-ur, and, jicrhaps, on the 
wholc, the foremost of British story-tellcrs. Scott' s 
Toryism, too, was of a diíTerent stripe from Words- 
worth' s, being rather the result of sentimcnt and 



teiulHlisni. 



From French Revolution to ihe Death of Scott. 207 

ima.oination than of philosophy and reflection. His 
mind struck deop root in the past ; his local attach- 
ments and faniily pride were intense. Abbotsford was 
his darling, and the expenses of this domain and of the 
baronial hospitality which he there extended to all 
comers wcre among the causes of his bankruptcy. The 
enormous toil which he exacted of himself, to pay off 
the debt of ^117,000, contracted by the failure of his 
publishers, cost him his life. It is said that he was 
more gratified vvhen the prince regent created him a 
baronet, in 1820, than by the public recognition that he 
acquired as the author of the " Waverley Novéis." 

Scott was attracted by the romantic side of Germán xraiisiations 
literature. His first published poem was a translation ^"',",,3',^" 
made in 1796 from Bürger's wild bailad, "Leonora." 
He followed this up with versions of the same poet's 
" Wiltle Jager, " of Goethe's violent drama of feudal 
life, " Gótz von Berlichingen," and with other transla- 
tions from the Germán of a similar class. On his 
horseback trips through the border, where he studied 
the primitive manncrs of the Liddesdale people, and 
took down oíd ballads from the recitation of ancient 
dames and cottagers, he amassed the materials for his 
" Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," 1802. But the " Minstreisy of 
first of his original poems was "The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel," published in 1805, and followed in quick 
succession by "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," 
"Rokeby," the "Lord of the Isles," and a volume of 
ballads and lyrical pieces, all issued during the years 
1806-14. The popularity won by this series of metrical 
romances was immediate and widespread. Nothing so 
frcsh or so brilliant had appeared in English poetry for 
ncarly two centuries. The reader was hurried along 
through scenes of rapid action, whose eñect was 



the Border.' 



208 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Scott's 

motiical 

romances. 



The 

" Waverley 

Novéis." 



heightened by wild landscapes and picturesque man- 
ners. The pleasure was a passive one. There was no 
deep thinking to perplex, no subtler beauties to 
pause ui)on ; the feelings were stirred pleasantly, but 
not deeply ; the eñect was on the surface. The spell 
employed was novelty — or, at most, wonder — and the 
chief emotion aroused was breathless interest in the 
progress of the story. Carlyle said that Scott's genius 
was in extenso, rather than in intenso, and that its 
great praise was its healthiness. This is true of his 
verse, but not altogether so of his prose, which ex- 
hibits deeper quaHties. Some of Scott's most perfect 
poenis, too, are his shorter ballads, like "Jock o' 
Hazeldean" and " Proud Maisie is in the Wood," 
which have a greater intensity and compression than his 
metrical tales. 

From 1 8 14 to 1831 Scott wrote and published the 
"Waverley Novéis," some thirty in number ; if we 
consider the amount of work done, the speed with 
which it was done, and the general average of excel- 
lence maintained, perhaps the most marvelous literary 
feat on record. The series was issued anonymously, 
and takes its ñame from the first number : ' ' Waverley, 
or 'Tis Sixty Years Since." This was founded upon 
the rising of the clans, in 1745, in support of the 
Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, and it re- 
vealcd to the English public that almost foreign country 
which lay just across their threshold, the Scottish 
Highlands. The "Waverley Novéis" remain, as a 
whüle, unequaled as historical fiction, although here 
and there a single novel, like George Eliot's "Romola," 
or Thackeray's " Henry Esmond," or Kingsley's "Hy- 
patia," may have attained a place beside the best of 
theni. They were a novelty when they appeared. 



From French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 209 



English prose fiction had somewhat declined since the 
time of Fielding and Goldsmith. There were truthful, 
though rather tame, delineations of provincial life, like 
Jane Austen's " Sense and Sensibility," 181 1, and ^rtunLof 
"Pride and Prejudice," 181 3 ; or Maria Edgeworth's Pí^^^g^j^^'^^^ 
"Popular Tales," 1804. On the other hand, there 
were Gothic romances, like "The Monk " of Matthew 
Gregory Lewis, to whose ' ' Tales of Wonder ' ' some 
of Scott' s translations from the Germán had been 
contributed ; or like Anne Radcliñe's " Mysteries of 
Udolpho. ' ' The great original of this school of fiction 
was Horace Walpole's " Casde of Otranto," 1765 — an 
absurd tale of secret trap-doors, subterranean vaults, 
apparitions of monstrous mailed figures and colossal 
helmets, pictures that descend from their frames, and 
hoUow voices that proclaim the ruin of ancient families. 
Scott used the machinery of romance, but he was 
not merely a romancer, or an historical novelist even, Scottnota 

•' ' mere 

and it is not, as Carlyle implies, the buñ-belts and romancer. 
jerkins which principally interest us in his héroes, 
"Ivanhoe" and " Kenilworth " and " The Talismán " 
are, indeed, romances puré and simple, and very good 
romances at that. But, in novéis such as " Rob Roy," 
"The Antiquary," "The Heart of Midlothian," and 
"The Bride of Lammermoor," Scott drew from con- 
temporary life, and from his intímate knowledge of 
Scotch character. The story is there, with its entangle- 
ment of plot and its exciting adventures, but there are 
also, as truly as in Shakspere, though not in the same 
degree, the observation of life, the knowledge of men, 
the power of dramatic creation. No writer awakens in 
his readers a warmer personal afíection than Walter 
Scott, the brave, honest, kindly gentleman, the noblest 
figure among the literary men of his generation. 



From Chaiccer to Tennyson. 



Thomas 
Campbell. 



" Childe 
Harold " 
and tlie 
poetrv of I 
ürien't. 



Another Scotch poet was Thomas Campbell, whose 
" Pleasures of Hope," 1799, was written in Pope's 
couplet, and in the stilted diction of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. " Gertrude of Wyoming," 1809, a long narra- 
tive poem in Spenserian stanza, is untrue to the scenery 
and life of Pennsylvania, where its scene is laid. But 
Campbell turned his rhetorical manner and his clank- 
ing, martial verse to fine advantage in such pieces as 
" Hohenlinden," "Ye Mariners of England," and 
"The Battle of the Baltic." These have the true lyric 
fire, and rank among the best English war-songs. 

When Scott was asked why he had left off writing 
poetry, he answered, " Bryon ¿¿-Z me. " George Gordon 
Byron (i 788-1 824) was a young man of twenty-four 
when, on his return from a two years' sauntering 
through Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, and the 
Levant, he published, in the first two cantos of " Childe 
Harold," 181 2, a sort of poetic itinerary of his experi- 
ences and impressions. The poem took, rather to its 
author's surprise, who said that he woke one morning 
and found himself famous. ' ' Childe Harold ' ' opened 
a new field to poetry : the romance of travel, the 
picturesque aspects of foreign scenery, manners, and 
costumes. It is instructive of the difference between 
the two ages, in poetic sensibility to such things, to 
compare Byron' s glowing imagery with Addison's 
tame " Letter from Italy," written a century before. 
' ' Childe Harold ' ' was foUowed by a series of metrical 
tales, "The Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The 
Corsair," "Lara," "The Siege of Corinth," "Pari- 
sina," and "The Prisoner of Chillón," all written in 
the years 1813-16. These poems at once took the 
place of Scott' s in popular interest, dazzling a public 
that had begun to weary of chivalry romances with 



Frorn French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 211 

pictures of eastern life, with incidents as exciting as 
Scott' s, descriptions as highly colored, and a much 
greater intensity of passion. So far as they depended 
for this interest upon the novelty of their accessories, 
the eñect was a temporary one. Seraghos, divans, 
bulbuls, GuHstans, Zuleikas, and other oriental proper- 
ties deluged English poetry for a time, and then sub- 
sided ; even as the tide of moss-troopers, sorcerers, 
hermits, and feudal castles had already had its rise and 
fall. 

But there was a deeper reason for the impression 
made by Byron's poetry upon his contemporaries. He Byronism. 
laid his finger right on the sore spot in modern life. 
He had the disease with which the time was sick, the 
world-weariness, the desperation which proceeded from 
"passion incapable of being converted into action." 
We find this tone in much of the literature which 
followed the failure of the French Revolution and the 
Napoleonic wars. From the irritations of that period, 
the disappointment of high hopes for the future of the 
race, the growing religious disbelief, and the revolt of 
democracy and free thought against conservativa re- 
action, sprang what Southey called the " Satanic 
school," which spoke its loudest word in Byron. 
Titanic is the better word, for the rebellion was not 
against God, but Júpiter ; that is, against the state, 
church, and society of Byron's day ; against George 
III., the Tory cabinet ofLord Castlereagh, the Duke of 
Wellington, the bench of bishops, London gossip, the 
British constitution, and British cant. In these poems 
of Byron, and in his dramatic experiments, "Manfred" an^^^r^afn 
and "Cain," there is a single figure — the figure of 
Byron under various masks — and one pervading mood, 
a restless and sardonio gloom, a weariness of life, a 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



love of solitude, and a melancholy exaltation in the 
presence of the wilderness and the sea. Byron's hero 
is ahvays represented as a man originally noble, whom 
some great wrong, by others, or some mysterious crinie 
of his own, has blasted and embittered, and who carries 
about the world a seared heart and a somber brow. 
Harold — who may stand as a type of all his héroes — 
has run " through sin's labyrinth," and feehng the 
"fulness of satiety," is drawn abroad to roam, "the 
wandering exile of his own dark mind. ' ' The loss of a 
capacity for puré, unjaded emotion is the constant 
burden of Byron's lament : 

No more, no more, O nevar more on me 
The freshness of the heart shall fall like dew : 

and again : 

O could I feel as I have felt — or be what I have been, 

Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished 

scene ; 
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish tho' they 

be, 
So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to 

me. 

This mood was sincere in Byron ; but by cultivating it, 
and posing too long in one attitude, he became self- 
conscious and theatrical, and much of his serious poetry 
has a false ring. His example infected the minor 
poetry of the time, and it was quite natural that 
Thackeray — who represented a generation that had a 
very diñerent ideal of the heroic — should be provoked 
into describing Byron as " a big sulky dandy. ' ' 

Byron was well fitted by birth and temperament to be 
the spokesman of this fierce discontent. He inherited 
from his mother a haughty and violent temper, and 
proflígate tendencies from his father. He was through 



From French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 2 1 3 

life a spoiled child, whose main characteristic was wilful- 
ness. He liked to shock people by exaggerating his 
wickedness, or by perversely maintaining the wrong 
side of a dispute. But he had traits of bravery and 
generosity. Women loved him, and he made strongf H's. 

, fascinating 

friends. There was a careless charm about him which personaiity. 

fascinated natures as unhke each other as Shelley and 

Scott. By the death of the fifth Lord Byron without 

issue, Byron carne into a title and estates at the age of 

ten. Though a Liberal in poHtics he had aristocratic 

feehngs, and was vain of his rank as he was of his 

beauty. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity 

CoUege, Cambridge, where he was idle and dissipated, 

but did a great deal of miscellaneous reading. He 

took some of his Cambridge set — Hobhouse, Matthews, 

and others — to Newstead Abbey, his ancestral seat, 

where they fiUed the ancient cloisters with eccentric 

orgies. Byron was strikingly handsome. His face had 

a spiritual paleness and a classic regularity, and his 

dark hair curled closely to his head. A deformity in 

one of his feet was a mortification to him, and impaired 

his activity in many ways, although he prided himself 

upon his powers as a swimmer. 

In 1815, when at the height of his literary and social 
■éclat in London, he married. In February of the anddivorce. 
foUowing year he was separated from Lady Byron, and 
left England forever, pursued by the execrations of out- 
raged respectability. In this chorus of abuse there was 
mingled a share of cant ; but Byron got, on the whole, 
what he deserved. From Switzerland, where he spent 
a summer by Lake Leman, with the Shelleys ; from 
Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Rome, scandalous reports 
of his intrigues and his wild debaucheries were wafted 
back to England, and with these came poem after 



214 From Chaucer to Tefinyson. 

poem, full of burning genius, pride, scorn, and anguish, 
and all hurling defiance at English public opinión. The 
third and fourth cantos of " Childe Harold," 1816-18, 
were a great advance upon the first two, and contain 
the best of Byron's serious poetry. He has written his 
ñame all over the continent of Europe, and on a hun- 
dred memorable spots has made the scenery his own. 
On the field of Waterloo, on ' ' the castled crag of 
Drachenfels," " by the blue rushing of the arrowy 
Rhone," in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, in the 
Coliseum at Rome, and among the " isles of Greece," 
the tourist is compelled to see with Byron's eyes and 
under the associations of his pilgrimage. In his later 
poems, such as "Beppo," i8i8, and "Don Juan," 
1819-23, he passed into his second manner, a mocking 
cynicism gaining ground upon the somevvhat stagy 
gloom of his early poetry — Mephistopheles gradually 
elbowing out Satán. "Don Juan," though morally 
the worst, is intellectually the most vital and repre- 
sentative of Byron's poems. It takes up into itself 
most fully the life of the time ; exhibits most thoroughly 
the characteristic alternations of Byron's moods and 
the prodigal resources of wit, passion, and understand- 
ing, which — rather than imagination — were his promi- 
nent qualities as a poet. The hero, a graceless, amorous 
stripling, goes vvandering from Spain to the Greek 
islands and Constantinople, thence to St. Petersburg, 
and finally to England. Everyvvhere his seductions are 
successful, and Byron uses him as a means of exposing 
the weakness of the human heart and the rottenness of 
society in all countries. 

In 1823, breaking away from his life of selfish indul- 
gence in Italy, Byron threw himself into the cause of 
Grecian liberty, which he had sung so gloriously in ' ' The 



From French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 2 1 5 

Isles of Greece." He died at Missolonghi, in the foUow- 
ing year, of a fever contracted by exposure and overwork. 

Byron vvas a great poet but not a great literary artist. 
He wrote negligently and with the ease of assured ^l^^^^^^ 
strength, his mind gathering heat as it moved, and Byron. 
pouring itself forth in reckless profusión. His work is 
difiuse and imperfect ; much of it is melodrama or 
speech-making, rather than true poetry. But, on the 
other hand, much, very much of it is unexcelled as 
the direct, strong, sincere utterance of personal feeling. 
Such is the quahty of his best lyrics, like ' ' When We 
Tvvo Parted," the " Elegy on Thyrza," " Stanzas to 
Augusta," " She Walks in Beauty," and of innumer- 
able passages, lyrical and descriptive, in his longer 
¡)ocnis. He had not the wisdom of Wordsworth, ñor 
the rich and subde imagination of Coleridge, Shelley, 
and Keats when they were at their best. But he had 
greater body and motive forcé than any of them. He 
is the strongest pcrsonality among English poets since 
Milton, though his strength was wasted by want of 
restraint and self-culture. In Milton the passion was 
there, but it was held in check by the will and the 
artistic conscience, made subordinate to good ends, 
ripened by long reflection, and finally uttered in forms 
of perfect and harmonious beauty. 

Byron' s love of nature was quite different in kind 
from Wordsworth' s. Of all English poets he has sung 

,,,,., -11 1 Nature in 

most lyncally of that national theme, the sea ; as wit- Hyron-s 
ncss, among many other passages, the famous apostro- 
phc to the ocean which closes " Childe Harold," and 
the opening of the third canto in the same poem, 

Once more upon the waters, etc. 
He had a passion for night and storm, because they 
made him forget himself. 



poetry. 



2i6 From Chaucer to Ten^iyson. 

Most glorious night ! 
Thou wert not sent for slumber ! Let me be 
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, 
A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 

Byron's literary executor and biographer was the 
Irish poet, Thomas Moore, a born song-writer, whose 
" Irish Melodies," set to oíd native airs, are, like 
Burns's, genuine, spontaneous singing, and run natu- 
rally to music. Songs such as ' ' The Meeting of the 
Waters," "The Harp of Tara," "Those Evening 
Bells," "The Light of Other Days," "Araby's 
Daughter," and "The Last Rose of Summer" were, 
and still are, popular favorites. Moore' s oriental ro- 
mance, " Lalla Rookh," 1817, is overladen with orna- 
ment and with a sugary sentiment that clogs the palate. 
He had the quick Irish wit, sensibility rather than 
passion, and fancy rather than imagination. 

Byron's friend, Percy Bysshe Shelley (i 792-1 822), 
was also in fiery revolt against all conventions and insti- 
tutions, though his revolt proceeded not, as in Byron's 
case, from the turbulence of passions which brooked no 
restraint, but rather from an intellectual impatience of 
any kind of control. He was not, like Byron, a 
sensual man, but températe and chaste. He was, 
indeed, in his life and in his poetry, as nearly a dis- 
embodied spirit as a human creature can be. The 
Germán poet, Heine, said that liberty was the religión 
of this century, and of this religión Shelley was a 
worshiper. His rebellion against authority began early. 
He refused to fag at Eton, and was expelled from 
Oxford for publishing a tract on "The Necessity of 
Atheism." At nineteen he ran away with Harriet 
Westbrook, and was married to her in Scotland. Three 
years later he deserted her for Mary Godwin, with 



From French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 2 1 7 

whom he eloped to Switzerland. Tvvo years after this 
his first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine, and 
Shelley was then formally wedded to Mary Godwin. 
AU this is rather startHng, in the bare statement of it, 
yet it is not inconsistent with the many testimonies that 
exist to Shelley' s singular purity and beauty of charac- 
ter, testimonies borne out by the evidence of his own 
writings. Impulse with him took the place of con- 
science. Moral law, accompanied by the sanction of The religión of 
power, and imposed by outside authority, he rejected ' ^^^^' 
as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked robustness 
and ballast. Byron, who was at the bottom intensely 
practical, said that Shelley' s philosophy was too 
spiritual and romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, 
wrote of Shelley : ' ' He has a fire in his eye, a fever in 
his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his 
speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is 
sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced." It was, per- 
haps, with some recollection of this last-mentioned trait 
of Shelley the man, that Carlyle wrote of Shelley the 
poet, that "the sound of him was shrieky," and that 
he had " filled the earth with an inarticulate wailing." 
His career as a poet began, characteristically enough, 
with the publication, while at Oxford, of a volume of 
political rimes, entitled " Margaret Nicholson's Re- 
mains," Margaret Nicholson being the crazy woman 
who tried to stab George III, His boyish poem, 
" Queen Mab," was published in 1813, "Alastor" in 
1816, and "The Revolt of Islam" — his longest — in P"^"*^- 
1 818, all before he was twenty-one. These were filled 
with splendid, though unsubstantial, imagery, but they 
were abstract in subject, and had the faults of incoher- 
ence and formlessness which make Shelley' s longer 
poems wearisome and confusing. They sought to 



Philosophical 
character of 
Shelley's 



2i8 From Chaucer to Tennyso7i. 

embody his social creed of perfectionism, as well as a 
certa in vague pantheistic system of belief in a spirit of 
love in nature and man, whose presence is a constant 
source of obscurity in Shelley's verse. In 1818 he 
went to Italy, where the last four years of his Ufe were 
passed, and where, under the influences of Italian art 
and poetry, his writing became deeper and stronger. 
He was fond of yachting, and spent much of his time 
upon the Mediterranean. In the summer of 1822 his 
boat was swamped in a squall ofí the Gulf of Spezzia, 
and Shelley's drowned body was washed ashore, and 
burned in the presence of Byron and Leigh Hunt. 
The ashes were entombed in the Protestant cemetery at 
Rome, with the epitaph, Cor cordhim. 

Shelley's best and maturest work, nearly all of which 
was done in Italy, includes his tragedy, "The Cenci," 
1819, and his lyrical drama, " Prometheus Unbound," 
1821. The first of these has a unity and a definiteness 
of contour unusual with Shelley, and is, with the excep- 
tion of some of Robert Browning's, the best English 
tragedy since Otway. Prometheus representad to 
Shelley's mind the human spirit fighting against divine 
oppression, and in his portrayal of this figure he kept 
in mind not only the " Prometheus" of yEschylus, but 
the Satán of " Paradise Lost." Indeed, in this poem 
Shelley came nearer to the sublime than any English 
poet since Milton. Yet it is in lyrical, rather than in 
dramatic, quality that ' ' Prometheus Unbound ' ' is 
great. If Shelley be not, as his latest editor, Mr. 
Forman, claims him to be, the foremost of English 
lyrical poets, he is at least the most lyrical of them. 
He had, in a supreme degree, the " lyric cry." His 
vibrant nature trembled to every breath of emotion, 
and his nerves craved ever newer shocks ; to pant, to 



From French Revolution to the Deaih of Scott. 219 

quiver, to thrill, to grow faint in the spasm of intense 
sensation. The feminine cast observable in Shelley's f ^f "ai^ o^t"^^**^ 
portrait is borne out by this tremulous sensibiHty in his 
verse. It is curious hovv often he uses the metaphor of 
win^s : of the winged spirit, soaring, Hke his skylark, 
till k)st in musió, rapture, light, and then falling back to 
earth. Three successive moods — longing, ecstasy, and 
the revulsión of despair — are expressed in many of his 
lyrics ; as iu the " Hymn to the Spirit of Nature " in 
" Prometheus," in the ode "To a Skylark," and in the 
"Lines to an Judian Air" — Edgar Poe's favorite. 
His passionate dcsire to lose himself in nature, to be- 
come one with that spirit of love and beauty in the 
universe which was to him in place of God, is ex- 
pressed in the "Ode to the West Wind," his most 
perfect poem : 

Makc me thy lyre, even as the forest is ; 

What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone 
Sweet, though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 

My spirit ! be thou me, impetuous one ! 

In the lyrical pieces already mentioned, together 
with "Adoiiais," the lines " Written in the Euganean "Adonais." 
Hills," " Epipsychidion," " Stanzas Written in Dejec- 
tion near Naples," "A Dream of the Unknown," and 
many othcrs, Shelley's lyrical genius reaches a rarer 
lovcliness and a more faultless art than Byron's ever 
attained, though it lacks the directness and momentum 
of Byron. 

In Shelley's longer poems, intoxicated with the music 
of his own singing, he abandons himself wholly to the 
guidance of his imagination, and the verse seems to go 
en of itself, like the enchanted boat in " Alastor," with 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Unsubstantial 
and confusing 
imagery of his 
longer poems. 



John Keats. 



no one at the helm. Vision succeeds visión in glorious 
but bewildering profusión ; ideal landscapes and cities of 
cloud "pinnacled dim in the intense inane." These 
poems are like the water-falls in the Yosemite, which, 
tumbling from a height of several thousand feet, are 
shattered into foam by the air, and waved about over 
the valley. Very beautiful is this descending spray, 
and the rainbow dwells in its bosom ; but there is no 
longer any stream, nothing but an iridescent mist. 
The word ethereal best expresses the quality of Shel- 
ley's genius. His poetry is full of atmospheric efiects ; 
of the tricks which light plays with the fluid elements of 
water and air ; of stars, clouds, rain, dew, mist, frost, 
wind, the foam of seas, the phases of the moon, the 
green shadows of waves, the shapes of flames, the 
"golden lightning of the setting sun." Nature, in 
Shelley, wants homeliness and relief. While poets like 
Wordsworth and Burns let in an ideal light upon the 
rough fields of earth, Shelley escapes into a "moonlight- 
colored " realm of shadows and dreams, among whose 
abstractions the heart turns cold. One bit of Words- 
worth' s mountain turf is worth them all. 

By the death of John Keats (1796-1821), whose 
elegy Shelley sang in "Adonais," English poetry 
suffered an irreparable loss. His " Endymion," 1818, 
though disfigured by mawkishness and by some afíecta- 
tions of manner, was rich in promise. Its faults were 
those of youth, the faults of exuberance and of a 
sensibility which time corrects. "Hyperion," 1820, 
promised to be his masterpiece, but he left it un- 
finished — "a titanio torso" — because, as he said, 
"there were too many Miltonic inversions in it." The 
subject was the displacement by Phoebus Apollo of the 
ancient sun-god, Hyperion, the last of the Titans who 



From French Revolution to the Death of Scott. 221 

retained his dominión. It was a theme of great capa- 

bilities, and the poem was begun by Keats with a 

strength of conception which leads to the belief that 

here was once more a really epic genius, had fate 

suffered it to mature. The fragment, as it stands — 

"that inlet to severe magnificence" — proves how " Hyperion. 

rapidly Keats' s diction was clarifying. He had learned 

to string up his loóse chords. There is nothing maud- 

Hn in "Hyperion"; all there is in whole tones and in 

the grand manner, "as subHme as ^schylus," said 

Byron, with the grave, antique simpHcity, and some- 

thing of modern sweetness interfused. 

Keats' s father was a groom in a London livery-stable. 
The poet was apprenticed at fifteen to a surgeon. At 
school he had studied Latin but not Greek. He, who of 
all the English poets had the most purely Hellenic spirit, 
made acquaintance with Greek literature and art only education. 
through the médium of classical dictionaries, transla- 
tions, and popular mythologies ; and later through the 
marbles and casts in the British Museum. His friend, 
the artist Haydon, lent him a copy of Chapman's 
Homer, and the impression that it made upon him he 
recorded in his sonnet, "On first looking into Chap- 
man's Homer." Other poems of the same inspiration 
are his three sonnets, " To Homer," " On Seeing the 
Elgin Marbles," "On a Picture of Leander," "Lamia," 
and the beautiful "Ode on a Grecian Urn." But 
Keats' s art was retrospective and eclectic, the blossom 
of a double root ; and ' ' golden-tongued Romance with 
serene lute" had her part in him, as well as the classics. 
In his seventeenth year he had read ' ' The Faerie 
Queene," and from Spenser he went on to a study of 
Chaucer, Shakspere, and Milton. Then he took up 
Italian and read Ariosto. The influence of these 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



studies is seen in his poem " Isabella, or the Pot of 
Basil," taken from a story of Boccaccio; in his wild 
bailad "La Belle Dame sans Merci"; and in his love 
tale "The Eve of St. Agnes," with its wealth of 
medieval adornment. In the "Ode to Autumn" and 
' ' Ode to a Nightingale ' ' the Hellenic choiceness is 
found touched with the warmer hues of romance. 

There is something deeply tragic in the short story 

' ^ *^ ■ of Keats's life. The seeds of consumption were in 

him ; he felt the stirrings of a potent genius, but he 

knew that he could not wait for it to unfold, but must 

die 

Before high-piled books in charactry 

Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain. 

His disease was aggravated, possibly, by the stupid 
brutality with which the reviewers had treated ' ' En- 
dymion ' ' ; and certainly by the hopeless love which de- 
voured him. "The very thing which I want to live 
most for," he wrote, "will be a great occasion of my 
death. If I had any chance of recovery, this passion 
would kill me." In the autumn of 1820, his disease 
gaining apace, he went on a sailing vessel to Italy, 
accompanied by a single friend, a young artist named 
Severn. The change was of no avail, and he died at 
Rome a few weeks after, in his twenty-sixth year. 

Keats was, above all things, the artist, with that love 
artist of the ^^ ^^^ beautiful and that instinct for its reproduction 
utifui. which are the artist' s divinest gifts. He cared little 

about the politics and philosophy of his day and he did 
not make his poetry the vehicle of ideas. It was 
sensuous poetry, the poetry of youth and gladness. 
But if he had lived, and if, with wider knowledge of 
men and deeper expericnce of life, he had attained to 
Wordsworth's spiritual insight and to Byron's power of 



From French Revolution to ihe Death of Scott. 223 

passion and understanding, he vvould have become a 
greater poet than either. For he had a style — a 
"natural magic " — vvhich only needed the chastening 
touch of a finer culture to make it superior to anything 
in modern English poetry, and to forcé us back to 
Milton or Shakspere for a comparison. His tomb- 
stone, not far from Shelley's, bears the inscription of his 
own choosing : " Here lies one whose ñame was writ in 
water." But it would be within the limits of truth to 
say that it is written in large characters on most of our 
contemporary poetry. " Wordsworth, " says Lowell, 
"has influenced most the ideas of succeeding poets ; 
Keats their forms." And he has influenced these out 
of all proportion to the amount which he left, or to his 
intellectual range, by virtue of the exquisite quality of 
his technique. 



1. Mrs. Oliphant : " Literary History of England, 
iSth-igth Centurias." London : 1883. 

2. Wordsworth: "Poems." Chosen and edited 
by Matthew Arnold. London : 1879. 

3. "Poetry of Byron." Chosen and arranged by 
Matthew Arnold. London : 1881. 

4. Shelley : "Julián and Maddalo," " Prome- 
theus Unbound," "The Cenci," " Lyrical Pieces." 
Centenary Edition, by G. E. Woodberry. 4 vols. Bos- 
ton : 1892. 

5. " Selections from W. S. Landor. " Edited by 
Sidney Colvin. London: 1890. 

6. CoLERiDGE : "Table Talk," "Notes on Shak- 
spere," "The Ancient Mariner," " Christabel," 
"Love," " Ode to France," "Ode to the Departing 
Year," " Kubla Khan," " Hymn before Sunrise in the 



224 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Vale of Chamouni," " Youth and Age," " Frost at 
Midnight." Edition of J. D. Campbell. London : 
1893. 

7. De Quincey : "Confessions of an English 
Opium Eater," " Revolt of the Tartars," "Biographi- 
cal Sketches." 

8. ScoTT : "Waverley," " Heart of Midlothian," 
" Bride of Lammermoor, " "Rob Roy," "Antiquary," 
"Marmion," " Lady of the Lake. " 

9. Keats : "Hyperion," "Eve of St. Agnes," 
" Lyrical Pieces. " Boston: 1871. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FrOM THE DeATH OF ScOTT TO THE PrESENT 

Time, 1832-1898. 

The literature of the past fifty years is too cióse to 
our eyes to enable the critic to pronounce a final judg- 
ment, or the literary historian to get a true perspective. 
Many of the principal writers of the time are still living, 
and many others have been dead but a few years. 
This concluding chapter, therefore, will be devoted to 
the consideration of the few who stand forth, incon- 
testably, as the leaders of literary thought, and who 
seem likely, under all future changes of fashion and 
taste, to remain representatives of their generation. 
As regards form, the most striking fact in the history 
of the period under review is the immense preponder- 
ance in its imaginative literature of prose fiction, of the 
novel of real life. The novel has become to the solitary Age of the 
reader of to-day what the stage play was to the audi- "°^^ ' 
enees of Elizabeth's reign, or the periodical essay, like 
the Tatler and Spectaior, to the clubs and breakfast 
tables of Queen Anne's, And if its criticism of life is 
less concentrated and brilliant than the drama gives, it 
is far more searching and minute. No period has ever 
left in its literary records so complete a picture of its 
whole society as the period which is just closing. At 
any other time than the present, the ñames of authors 
like Charlotte Bronté, Charles Kingsley, and Charles 
Reade — ñames which are here merely mentioned in 
passing — besides many others which want of space for- 



226 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Charles 
Dickens. 



bids US even to mention, would be of capital im- 
portance. As it is, we must limit our review to the 
three acknowledged masters of modern English fiction, 
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), William Makepeace 
Thackeray (1811-1863), and " George Eliot " (Mary 
Ann Evans, 18 19-1880). 

It is sometimes helpful to reduce a great writer to his 
lowest term, in order to see what the prevailing bent of 
his genius is. This lowest term may often be found in 
his early work, before experience of the world has 
overlaid his original impulse with foreign accretions. 
Dickens was much more than a humorist, Thackeray 
than a satirist, and George Eliot than a moralist ; but 
they had their starting-points respectively in humor, in 
burlesque, and in strong ethical and religious feeling. 
Dickens began with a broadly comic series of papers, 
contributed to the Oíd Magazine and the Evening 
Chronide, and reprinted in book form, in 1836, as 
"Sketches by Boz." The success of these suggested 
to a firm of publishers the preparation of a number of 
similar sketches of the misadventures of cockney sports- 
men, to accompany plates by the comic draughtsman 
Mr. R. Seymour. This suggestion resulted in the 
"Pickwick Papers," published in monthly instalments 
in 1836-37. The series grew, under Dickens' s hand, 
into a continuous though rather loosely strung narrative 
of the doings of a set of characters, conceived with 
such exuberant and novel humor that it took the public 
by storm and raised its author at once to fame. 
"Pickwick" is by no means Dickens' s best, but it is 
his most characteristic and most popular book. 

At the time that he wrote these early sketches he 
was a repórter for the Morning Chronicle. His natu- 
rally acute powers of observation had been trained in 



From the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 227 

this pursuit to the utmost efficiency, and there always 

continued to be about his descriptive writing a repor- 

torial and newspaper air. He had the eye for eñect, 

the sharp fidelity to detail, the instinct for rapidly 

seizing upon and exaggerating the salient point, which 

are developed by the requirements of modern journal- 

ism. Dickens knew London as no one else has ever 

known it, and, in particular, he knew its hideous and ^^^^"^^¡^^ ^^ 

grotesque recesses, with the strange developments of London. 

human nature that abide there ; slums like Tom-all- 

Alone's, in " Bleak House " ; the river-side haunts of 

Rogue Riderhood, in " Our Mutual Friend " ; as well 

as the oíd inns, like the " White Hart," and the 

"dusky purlieus of the law." As a man, his favorite 

occupation was walking the streets, where, as a child, 

he had picked up the most valuable part of his educa- 

tion. His tramps about London — often after nightfall 

— sometimes extended to fifteen miles in a day. He 

knew, too, the shifts of poverty. His father — some 

traits of whom are preserved in Mr. Micawber — was 

imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, where 

his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a 

boy of ten, was employed at six shillings a week to 

cover blacking-pots in Warner' s blacking warehouse. 

The hardships and loneliness of this part of his life are 

told under a thin disguise in Dickens' s masterpiece, 

"David Copperfield," the most autobiographical of his 

novéis. From these young experiences he gained that cjfp'e'rlieid." 

insight into the lives of the lower classes and that 

sympathy with children and with the poor which shine 

out in his pathetic sketches of Littíe Nell in "The Oíd 

Curiosity Shop," of Paul Dombey, of poor Jo in "Bleak 

House," of "the Marchioness," and a hundred other 

figures. 



228 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



" Bleak 
House." 



Faults of taste. 



In " Oliver Twist," contributed, during 1837-38, to 
Bentley s Miscellany, a monthly magazine of which 
Dickens was editor, he produced his first regular novel. 
In this story of the criminal classes the author showed 
a tragic power which he had not hitherto exhibited. 
Thenceforward his career was a series of dazzling suc- 
cesses. It is impossible here to particularize his nu- 
merous novéis, sketches, short tales, and " Christmas 
Stories" — the latter a fashion which he inaugurated, 
and which has produced a whole literature in itself. 
In " Nicholas Nickleby," 1839, " Master Humphrey's 
Clock," 1840, "Martin Chuzzlewit," 1844, " Dombey 
and Son," 1848, "David Copperfield," 1850, and 
"Bleak House," 1853, there is no falling off in 
strength. The last named was, in some respects, and 
especially in the skilful construction of the plot, his 
best novel. In some of his latest books, as " Great 
Expectations," 1861, and " Our Mutual Friend," 1865, 
there are signs of a decline. This showed itself in an 
unnatural exaggeration of characters and motives, and 
a painful straining after humorous efíects ; faults, in- 
deed, from which Dickens was never whoUy free. 
There was a histrionic side to him, which came out in 
his fondness for prívate theatricals, in which he ex- 
hibited remarkable talent, and in the dramatic action 
which he introduced into the delightful pubUc readings 
from his works that he gave before vast audiences all 
over the United Kingdom, and in his two visits to 
America. It is not surprising, either, to learn that 
upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and 
farce. His own serious writing was always danger- 
ously cióse to the melodramatic, and his humor to the 
farcical. There is much false art, bad taste, and even 
vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentle- 



From the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 229 

man, and never succeeded vvell in drawing gentlemen or 
ladies. 

In the región of low comedy he is easily the most 
original, the most inexhaustible, the most wonderful, of 
modern humorists. Creations such as Mrs. Nickleby, 
Mr. Micawber, Sam Weller, Sairy Gamp, take rank ^^^5^^^^"=°'"''= 
with Falstaff and Dogberry ; while many others, like 
Dick Swiveller, Stiggins, Chadband, Mrs. Jellyby, and 
Julia Mills, are almost equally good. In the innumer- 
able swarm of minor characters with which he has 
enriched our comic literature there is no indistinctness. 
Indeed, the objection that has been made to him is 
that his characters are too distinct — that he puts labels 
on them ; that they are oíten mere personifications of a 
single trick of speech or manner, which becomes 
tedious and unnatural by repetition. Thus, Grand- 
father Smallweed is always settling down into his 
cushion, and having to be shaken up ; Mr. Jellyby is 
always sitting with his head against the wall ; Peggotty 
is always bursting her buttons off, etc. As Dickens's 
humorous characters tend perpetually to run into 
caricatures and grotesques, so his sentiment, from the 
same excess, slops over too frequently into "gush," Excessof 
and into a too delibérate and protracted attack upon the 
pity. A favorite humorous device in his style is a 
stately and roundabout way of telling a trivial incident, 
as where, for example, Mr. Roker ' ' muttered certain 
unpleasant invocations concerning his own eyes, limbs, 
and circulating fluids " ; or where the drunken man who 
is singing comic songs in the Fleet received from Mr. 
Smangle " a gentle intimation, through the médium of 
the water-jug, that his audience were not musically dis- 
posed." This manner was original with Dickens, 
though he may have taken a hint of it from the mock 



Hmnor of 
Diikous ¡uul 



230 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

heroic language of "Jonathan Wild " ; but as practiced 
by a thousand imitators, ever since, it has gradually 
become a burdeii. 

It would not be the whole truth to say that the diñer- 

cnce betvveen the humor of Thackeray and Dickens is 

the same as betvveen that of Shakspere and Ben Jonson. 

Thackeray Yet it ís truc that thc ' ' humors ' ' of Ben Jonson have 

coinparetl. _ _ •' 

an analogy vvith the extremer instances of Dickens' s 
character sketches in tliis respect, namely, that they 
are both studies of the eccentric, the abnormal, the 
wliimsical, rather than of the typical and universal ; 
studies of manners, rather than of whole characters. 
And it is casily conceivable that, at no distant day, the 
oddities of Captain Cuttlc, Deportment Turveydrop, 
Mark Taplcy, and Newman Noggs will seem as far- 
fetchcd and impossilile as those of Captain Otter, 
Fastidious Brisk, and Sir Amorous La-Foole. 

When Dickens vvas looking about for some one to 
takc Seymour's place as illustrator of " Pickwick," 

wiiiiam Thackeray aiiplied for the iob, but without success. 

Tiiackeíay. Me was thcn a young man of twenty-five, and stiU 
hesitating betvveen art and literaturc. He had begun to 
dravv caricatures with his pencil when a schoolboy at the 
Charter House, and to scribble tliem vvith his pen when 
a studcnt at Cambridge, editing Thc Snob, a weekly 
under-graduate paper, and parodying the prize poem 
" Timbuctoo " of his contemporary at the university, 
Alfred Tennyson. Then he went abroad to study art, 
passing a season at Weimar, where he met Goethe and 
fiUed the albums of the young Saxon ladies with carica- 
tures ; afterward living a bohemian cxistence in the 
Latin quarter at Paris, studying art in a dcsultory vvay, 
and seeing men and cities ; accumulating portfolios full 
of sketches, but laying up stores of material to be used 



From the Deaih of Scott to the Present Time. 231 

afterward to greater advantage when he should settle 
upon his true médium of expression. By 1837, having 
lost his fortune of five hundred pounds a year ¡11 specu- 
lation and gambling, he began to contribute to Fraser' s, 
and thereafter to the Nezv Monthly, Cruikshank's 
Comic Almanac, Punch, and other periodicals, clever ^^^^,^^^^''-'''' 
burlesques, art criticisms by " Michael Angelo Tit- 
marsh," " Yellowplush Papers," and all manner of skits, 
satirical character sketches, and humorous tales, like 
" The Great Hoggarty Diamond " and "The Luck of 
Barry Lyndon. ' ' Some of these were coUected in ' ' The 
Paris Sketch-Book," 1840, and "The Irish Sketch- 
Book," 1843 ; but Thackeray was slow in vvinning 
recognition, and it was not until the publication of his 
first great novel, " Vanity Fair," in monthly parts, 
during 1846-48, that he achieved anything like the gen- 
eral reputation that Dickens had reached at a bound. 

"Vanity Fair" described itself, on its tide-page, as 
"a novel without a hero." It was also a novel without "Vanity Fair.' 
a plot — in the sense in which " Bleak House " or 
"Nicholas Nickleby" had a plot — and in that respect 
it set the fashion for the latest school of realistic fiction, 
being a transcript of life, without necessary beginning 
or end. Indeed, one of the pleasantest things to a 
reader of Thackeray is the way which his characters 
have of reappearing, as oíd acquaintances, in his differ- 
ent books ; just as, in real life, people drop out of 
mind and then turn up again in other years and places. 
"Vanity Fair" is Thackeray' s mastcrpiece, but it is 
not the best introduction to his writings. There are 
no illusions in it, and to a young reader fresh from 
Scott' s romances or Dickens' s sympathetic extrava- 
gances, it will seem hard and repellent. But men who, 
like Thackeray, have seen life and tasted its bitterness 



232 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



and felt its hollowness know how to prize it. Thack- 
Thackeray an gj-^y docs not iTierely cxposc the cant, the emptiness, 
satirist, the self-seeking, the false pretenses, flunkyism, and 

snobbery — the "mean admiration of mean things " — 
in the great world of London society ; his keen, un- 
sparing visión detects the base alloy in the purest 
natures. There are no ' ' héroes ' ' in his books, no 
perfect characters. Even his good women, such as 
Helen and Laura Pendennis, are capable of cruel in- 
justice toward less fortúnate sisters, hke little Fanny ; 
and Ameha Sedley is led, by bUnd feminine instinct, to 
snub and tyrannize over poor Dobbin. The shabby 
miseries of Ufe, the numbing and belittling influences of 
failure and poverty on the most generous natures, are 
the tragic themes which Thackeray handles by prefer- 
ence. He has been called a cynic, but the boyish 
playfulness of his humor and his kindly spirit are incom- 
patible with cynicism. Charlotte Bronté said that 
Fielding was the vulture and Thackeray the eagle. 
The comparison would have been truer if made be- 
tween Svvift and Thackeray. Swift was a cynic ; his 
pen was driven by hate, but Thackeray' s by love, and 
it was not in bitterness but in sadness that the latter 
laid bare the wickedness of the world. He was himself 
a thorough man of the world, and he had that dislike 
for a display of feeling which characterizes the modern 
Englishman, But behind his satirio mask he concealed 
the manliest tenderness, and a reverence for every- 
thing in human nature that is good and true. 

Thackeray' s other great novéis are "Pendennis," 

1849, "Henry Esmond," 1852, and "The Newcomes," 

His other 1 855 — the last of whicli contains his most lovable char- 

acter, the pathetic and immortal figure of Colonel New- 

come, a creation worthy to stand, in its dignity and its 



but not a cynic. 



From the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 233 

sublime weakness, by the side of Don Quixote. It 

was alleged against Thackeray that he made all his His characters. 

good characters, Hke Major Dobbin and AmeUa Sedley 

and Colonel Newcome, intellectually feeble, and his 

brilliant characters, hke Becky Sharp and Lord Steyne 

and Blanche Amory, morally bad. This is not entirely 

true, but the other complaint — that his women are 

inferior to his men — is true in a general way. Some- 

what inferior to his other novéis were "The Vir- 

ginians," 1858, and "The Adventures of Philip," 

1862. All of these were stories of contemporary life, 

except " Henry Esmond " and its sequel, "The Vir- 

ginians," vvhich, though not precisely historical fictions, 

introduced historical figures, such as Washington and 

the Earl of Peterborough. Their period of action was 

the eighteenth century, and the dialogue was a cunning 

• • ^ f , 1 <• , -^11 Hisfondness 

imitation of the language of that time. Thackeray was for the 

1 1 1. 1 • 1 1 TT- 1- eighteetith 

strongly attracted by the eighteenth century. His liter- century. 
ary teachers were Addison, Swift, Steele, Gay, Johnson, 
Richardson, Goldsmith, Fielding, SmoUett, and Sterne, 
and his special master and model was Fielding. He 
projected a history of the century, and his studies in 
this kind took shape in his two charming series of 
lectures on "The English Humorists " and "The Four 
Georges." These he delivered in England and in 
America, to which country he, like Dickens, made two 
several visits. 

Thackeray' s genius was, perhaps, less astonishing 
than Dickens' s ; less fertile, spontaneous, and inventive; 
but his art is sounder, and his delineation of character 
more truthful. After one has formed a taste for his 
books, Dickens' s sentiment will seem overdone, and 
much of his humor will have the air of buffoonery. 
Thackeray had the advantage in another particular : he 



234 From Chaucer io Tennyson. 

described the lifc of the iipper classes, and Dickens of 
m!d i)ick7ns. ^'^^ lower, It may be true that the latter oíTcrs richcr 
material to the novelist, in tlie play of elementary 
passions and in strong native developments of char- 
acter. It is true, also, that Thackeray approached 
' ' society ' ' rathcr to satirize it than to set forth its 
agreeableness. Yet, after all, it is "the great world" 
which he describes, that world upon vvhich the broaden- 
ing and refining processes of a high civilization have 
done their utmost, and which, consequently, must 
possess an intellcctual interest superior to anything in 
the life of London thieves, travcling showmen, and 
coachees. Thackeray is the equal of Swift as a satirist, 
of Dickens as a humorist, and of Scott as a novelist. 
The one clement lacking in him — and which Scott had 
in a high degree — is the poctic imagination. "I have 
no brains above niy eyes," he said ; "I describe what I 
see." Henee there is wanting in his creations that linal 
charní which Shakspere's have. For what the eyes 
see is not all. 

The great wonian who wrote undcr tho ptMi-namc of 
GtorRe Kiiot. Goorgc EHot was a humorist, too. She had a rich, 
deep humor of hcr own, and a wit that crystallized into 
sayings which are not opigrams only because their 
wisdom strikes more than their smartness. But humor 
was not, as with Thackeray and Dickens, her point of 
view. A country girl, the daughter of a land agent 
and surveyor at Nuneaton, in Warwickshire, her early 
letters and journals cxhibit a Calvinistic gravity and 
moral severity. Latcr, whcii lur truth to her con- 
victions led her to renounce the Christian belief, she 
carried into positivism the same roligious earnestness, 
and wrote the one English hymn of ihe religión of 
humanity : 



From the Death of Scott to the Prese^it Time. 235 

O, k't me join the choir invisible, etc. 

Her first published work was a translation of Strauss's 
" Leben Jcsu," 1S46. In 1851 she went to London 
and became one of the editors of the Radical orefan, the L«stof her 
IVestminsícr Revietv. Here she formed a connection — a 
niarriage in all but the ñame — with George Henry 
Lewes, who was, hke hersclf, a freethinker, and who 
pubUshed, among othcr things, a ' ' Biographical His- 
tory of Philosophy." Lewes had also writtcn fiction, 
and it was at his suggestion that his wife undertook 
story writing. Her " Scencs of Clerical Life" were 
contributcd to B/ackwood' s Magazine for 1857, and 
published in book form in the foUowing year. ' ' Adam 
Bede" followed in 1859, "The Mili on the Floss" in 
1860, " Silas Marner" in 1861, "Romola" in 1863, 
"Félix Holt" in 1S66, and " Middlemarch " in 1872. 
All of these, except ' ' Romola, ' ' are tales of provincial 
and largely of domestic life in the midland counties. 
" Romola" is an historical novel, the scene of which is 
Florence in the fifteenth century, the Florence of 
Machiavelli and of Savonarola. 

George Eliot's method was very diñerent from that 
of Thackeray or Dickens. She did not crowd her 
canvas with the swarming life of cities. Her figures 
are comparatively few, and they are selected from the Theirethjcaí 
middle-class families of rural parishes or small towns, '^^^ "^" 
amid that atmosphere of "fine oíd leisure," whose dis- 
appearance she lamentcd. Her drama is a still-life 
drama, intensely and profoundly inward. Character is 
the stuff that she works in, and she deals with it more 
subtly than Thackeray. With him the tragedy is pro- 
duced by the prossure of society and its false standards 
upon the individual ; with her, by the malign influence 
of individuáis upon one another. She watches "the 



236 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



Autobiograph- 
ical fiction. 



Analytical 
habit ofmind. 



stealthy convergence of human fates," the intersection 
at various angles of the planes of character, the power 
that the lower nature has to thwart, stupefy, or corrupt 
the higher, which has become entangled with it in the 
mesh of destiny. At the bottom of every one of her 
stories there is a problem of the conscience or the 
intellect. In this respect she resembles Havvthorne, 
though she is not, Hke him, a romancer, but a reahst. 
There is a melancholy philosophy in her books, most 
of which are tales of failure or frustration. ' ' The Mili 
on the Floss ' ' contains a large element of autobiogra- 
phy, and its heroine, Maggie Tulliver, is, perhaps, her 
idealized self. Her aspirations after a fuUer and nobler 
existence are condemned to struggle against the resist- 
ance of a narrow, provincial environment and the 
pressure of untoward fates. She is tempted to seek an 
escape even through a desperate throwing off of moral 
obligations, and is driven back to her duty only to die 
by a sudden stroke of destiny. ' ' Life is a bad busi- 
ness," wrote George Eliot, in a letter to a friend, " and 
we must make the most of it." " Adam Bede" is, in 
construction, the most perfect of her novéis, and 
" Silas Marner" of her shorter stories. Her analytic 
habit gained more and more upon her as she wrote. 
" Middlemarch," in some respects her greatest book, 
lacks the unity of her earlier novéis, and the story 
tends to become subordínate to the working out of 
character studies and social problems. The philosophic 
speculations which she shared with her husband were 
seemingly unfavorable to her artistic growth, a circum- 
stance which becomes apparent in her last novel, 
"Daniel Deronda," 1877. Finally, in "The Impres- 
sions of Theophrastus Such," 1879, she abandoned 
narrative altogether, and recurred to that type of 



From the Death of Scott to the Present Time, zyj 

' ' character ' ' books which we have met as a flourishing 
department of literature in the seventeenth century, 
represented by such works as Earle's " Microcosmog- 
raphie" and FuUer's " Holy and Profane State." 

The moral of George Ellot's writings is not obtruded. 
She never made the artistic mistake of writing a novel 
of purpose, or what the Germans cali a tendenz-romari ; 
as Dickens did, for example, when he attacked im- 
prisonment for debt in "Pickwick," the poor laws in 
"Oliver Twist," the Court of Chancery in "Bleak 
House," and the Circumlocution Office in "Little 
Dorrit." 

Next to the novel, the essay has been the most over- 
flowing literary form used by the writers of this genera- 
tion — a form characteristic, it may be, of an age which 
"lectures, not creates." It is not the essay of Bacon, 
ñor yet of Addison, ñor of Lamb, but attempts a com- 
plete treatment. Indeed, many longish books, like 
Carlyle's "Héroes and Hero Worship" and Ruskin's 
" Modern Painters," are, in spirit, rather literary essays 
than formal treatises. The most popular essayist and 
historian of his time was Thomas Babington Macaulay 
(i 800-1 859), an active and versatile man, who won 
splendid success in many fields of labor. He was 
prominent in public life as one of the leading orators 
and writers of the Whig party. He sat many times in 
the House of Commons, as member for Calne, for 
Leeds, and for Edinburgh, and took a distinguished 
part in the debates on the Reform Bill of 1832. He Thomas 
held office in several Whig governments, and during Macaulay. 
his four years' service in British India, as member of 
the Supreme Council of Calcutta, he did valuable work 
in promoting education in that province and in codify- 
ing the Indian penal law. After his return to England, 



238 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



His wonderful 

memory. 



His prosestyle. 



and especially after the publication of his " History of 
England from the Accession of James II.," honors and 
appointments of all kinds were showered upon him. In 
1857 he was raised to the peerage as Barón Macaulay of 
Rothley. 

Macaulay' s equipment, as a writer on historical and 
biographical subjects, was, in some points, unique. 
His reading was prodigious, and his memory so tena- 
cious that it was said, with but little exaggeration, that 
he never forgot anything that he had read. He could 
repeat the whole of " Paradise Lost" by heart, and 
thought it probable that he could rewrite ' ' Sir Charles 
Grandison " from memory. In his books, in his 
speeches in the House of Commons, and in prívate 
conversation — for he was an eager and fluent talker, 
running on often for hours at a stretch — he was never 
at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation 
after citation of dates, ñames, facts of all kinds, and 
passages quoted verbaiim from his multifarious reading. 

The first of Macaulay' s writings to attract general 
notice was his article on "Milton," printed in the 
August number of the Edinhirgh Review for 1825. 
The editor, Lord Jeffrey, in acknowledging the receipt 
of the manuscript, wrote to his new contributor, ' ' The 
more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked 
up that style. ' ' That celebrated style — about which so 
much has since been written — was an index to the 
mental character of its owner. 

Macaulay was of a confident, sanguine, impetuous 
nature. He had great common sense, and he saw 
what he saw quickly and clearly, but he did not see 
very far below the surface. He wrote with the convic- 
tion of an advócate and the easy omniscience of a man 
whose learning is really nothing more than "general 



Froin the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 239 

information ' ' raised to a very high power, rather than 

with the subtle penetration of an original or truly 

philosophic intellect, like Coleridge's or De Quincey's. 

He always had at hand explanations of events or of Characteristics. 

characters which were admirably easy and simple — too 

simple, indeed, for the complicated phenomena which 

they professed to explain. His style was clear, ani- 

mated, showy, and even its faults were of an exciting 

kind. It was his habit to give piquancy to his writing 

by putting things concretely. Thus, instead of saying, 

in general terms — as Hume or Gibbon might have 

done — that the Normans and Saxons began to mingle 

about 1200, he says : "The great-grandsons of those 

who had fought under William and the great-grandsons 

of those who had fought under Harold began to draw 

near to each other. ' ' 

Macaulay was a great scene painter, who neglected 
delicate truths of detall for exaggerated distemper 
effects. He used the rhetorical machinery of climax 
and hyperbole for all that it was worth, and he " made 
points " — as in his essay on " Bacon " — by creating 
antithesis. In his " History of England " he inaugu- 
rated the picturesque method of historical writing. The Pjcturesque 
book was as fascinating as any novel. Macaulay, like 
Scott, had the historie imagination, though his method 
of turning history into romance was very diíTerent from 
Scott' s. Among his essays the best are those which, 
like the ones on "Lord Clive," " Warren Hastings," 
and " Frederick the Great," deal with historical sub- 
jects ; or those which deal with literary subjects under 
their public historie relations, such as the essays on 
"Addison," "Bunyan," and "The Comic Dramatists 
of the Restoration." " I have never written a page of 
criticism on poetry, or the fine arts," wrote Macaulay, ^ 



240 



From Chaucer io Tennyson. 



" Lays of 

Aticiciit 

Rome." 



Tilomas 
Carlyle. 



His 
Üermanism. 



" which I would not burn if I had the power. " Never- 
thelcss his own "Lays of Ancient Rome," 1842, are 
good, stirring verse of the emphatic and declamatory 
kind, though their quaUty may be rather rhetorical than 
poetic. 

Our critical time has not forborne to criticize itself, 
and perhaps the writer who impressed himself most 
strongly upon his generation vvas the one who railed 
most desperately against the "spirit of the age." 
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was occupied between 
1822 and 1830 chiefly in imparting to the British public 
a knovvledge of Germán literature. He pubUshed, 
among other things, a "Life of Schiller," a translation 
of Goethe' s " Wilhehii Meister," and tvvo volumes of 
translations from the Germán romancers — Tieck, Hoff- 
mann, Richter, and Fouqué — and contributed to the 
Edinhu'gh and Foreign Reviczv articles on Goethe, 
Werner, NovaHs, Richter, Germán playwrights, the 
" Nibelungen Lied," etc. His own diction became 
more and more tinctm-ed with Germanisms. There 
was something Gothic in his taste, which was attracted 
by the lawless, the grotesque, and the whimsical in the 
writings of Jean Paul Richter. His favorite among 
English humorists was Sterne, who has a share of these 
same quahties. He spoke disparagingly of " the sensu- 
ous literature of the Greeks," and preferred the Norse 
to the Hellenic mythology. Even in his admirable 
critical essays on Burns, on Richter, on Scott, Diderot, 
and Voltaire, which are free from his later mannerism — 
written in English, and not in Carlylese — his sense of 
spirit is always more lively than his sense of form. He 
finally became so impatient of art as to maintain — half- 
seriously — the paradox that Shakspere would have 
done better to write in prose. 



From the Death of Scott io the Present Time. 241 

In three of these early essays — on "The Signs of 
the Times," 1829, on "History," 1830, and on 
" Characteristics," 1831 — are to be found the germs of 
all his later writings. The first of these was an arraign- 
ment of the mechanical spirit of the age. In every Eariy essays. 
province of thought he discovered too great a reliance 
upon Systems, institutions, machinery, instead of upon 
men. Thus, in religión, we have Bible societies, 
"machines for converting the heathen." " In defect 
of Raphaels and Angelos and Mozarts, we have royal 
academies of painting, sculpture, music. " In hke man- 
ner, he complains, government is a machine. " Its 
duties and faults are not those of a father, but of an 
active parish constable." Against the "pólice theory," 
as distinguished from the "paternal" theory, of gov- 
ernment, Carlyle protested with ever shriller iteration. 
In "Chartism," 1839, " Past and Present," 1843, and 
" Latterday Pamphlets," 1850, he denounced this 
laissez-faire idea. The business of government, he re- 
peated, is to govern ; but this view makes it its business 
to refrain from governing. He fought most fiercely 
against the conclusions of political economy, "the dis- 
mal science " vvhich, he said, afifirmed that men were 
guided exclusively by their stomachs. He protested, against* " 
too, against the Utilitarians, followers of Bentham and mferaíi'sm. 
Mili, with their "greatest happiness principie," which 
reduced virtue to a profit-and-loss account. 

Carlyle took issue with modern liberalism ; he ridi- 
culed the self-gratulation of the time, all the talk about 
progress of the species, unexampled prosperity, etc. 
But he was reactionary without being conservative. 
He had studied the French Revolution, and he saw the 
fateful, irresistible approach of democracy. He had no 
faith in government "by counting noses," and he hated 



242 



Froni Chaticer to Tennyson. 



" Hero 

Worship. 



Biographical 
conception of 
history. 



talking Parliaments ; but neither did he put trust in 
an aristocracy that spent its time in ' ' preserving the 
game. ' ' What he wanted was a great individual ruler, 
a real king or hero ; and this doctrine he set forth 
afterward most fuUy in "Hero Worship," 1841, and 
illustrated in his lives of representative héroes, such as 
his "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," 1845, and his 
great "History of Frederick the Great," 1858-65. 
Cromwell and Frederick were well enough ; but as Car- 
lyle grew older his admiration for mere forcé grew, and 
his latest hero was none other than that infamous Dr. 
Francia, the South American dictator, whose career of 
bloody and crafty crime horrified the civilized world. 

The essay on "History" was a protest against the 
scientific view of history which attempts to explain away 
and account for the wonderful. "Wonder," he wrote 
in " Sartor Resartus," " is the basis of all worship." 
He defined history as "the essence of innumerable 
biographies." "Mr. Carlyle," said the Italian patriot 
Mazzini, " comprehends only the individual. The 
nationality of Italy is, in his eyes, the glory of having 
produced Dante and Christopher Columbus." This 
trait comes out in his greatest book, ' ' The French 
Revolution," 1837, which is a mighty tragedy enacted 
by a few leading characters — Mirabeau, Danton, Napo- 
león. He loved to emphasize the superiority of history 
over fiction as dramatic material. The third of the 
three essays mentioned was a Jeremiad on the morbid 
self-consciousness of the age, which shows itself in 
religión and philosophy as skepticism and introspective 
metaphysics ; and in literature as sentimentalism and 
" view-hunting." 

But Carlyle' s epoch-making book was "Sartor Re- 
sartus" (The Tailor Retailored), published in Fraser's 



From the Death of Scott ío the Present Time. 243 

Magazine for 1833-34, and first reprinted in book form 

in America. This was a satire upon shams, conventions, '¿I^^Jg : 

the disguises which overlie the most spiritual realities 

of the soul. It purported to be the life and clothes- 

philosophy of a certain Diogenes Teufelsdróckh, Pro- 

fessor der Allerlei Wissenschaft — of things in general — 

in the University of Weissnichtvvo. "Society," said 

Carlyle, " is founded upon cloth," foUowing the sug- 

gestions of Lear's speech to the naked bedlam beggar : 

' ' Thou art the thing itself : unaccommodated man is 

no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou 

art ' ' ; and borrowing also, perhaps, an ironical hint ' 

from a paragraph ih Swift's " Tale of a Tub" : "A sect 

■\vas established who held the universe to be a large suit 

of clothes. . . . If certain ermines or furs be placed 

in a certain position, we style them a judge ; and so an 

apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a 

bishop. " In " Sartor Resartus ' ' Carlyle let himself gck 

It was wilful, uncouth, amorphous, titanic. There was 

something monstrous in the combination — the hot heart 

of the Scot married to the transcendental dream of Ger- 

many. It was not English, said the reviewers ; it was 

not sense ; it was disfiguf ed by obscurity and ' ' mysti- 

cism. " Nevertheless even the thin-witted and the dry- 

witted had to acknowledge the powerful beauty of many 

chapters and passages, rich with humor, eloquence, 

poetry, deep-hearted tenderness, or passionate scorn. 

Carlyle was a voracious reader, and the plunder of 
whole literatures is strewn over his pages. He flung 

r , , • , • , Carlyle's 

about the resources of the language with a giant s diction. 
strength, and made new words at every turn. The 
concreteness and the swarming fertility of his mind are 
evidenced by his enormous vocabulary, computed 
greatly to exceed Shakspere's, or any other single 



244 



From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



writer's in the English tongue, His style lacks the 
crowning grace of simplicity and repose. It astonishes, 
but it also fatigues. 

Carlyle's influence has consisted more in his attitude 
than in any special truth which he has preached. It 
has been the influence of a moraUst, of a practical 
rather than a speculative philosopher. ' ' The end of 
man," he wrote, " is an action, not a thought." He 
has not been able to persuade the time that it is going 
wrong, but his criticisms have been wholesomely cor- 
rective of its self-conceit. In a democratic age he has 
insisted upon the undemocratic virtues of obedience, 
silence, and reverence. Ehrftirchi, reverence — the text 
of his address to the students of Edinburgh University 
in 1866 — is the last word of his philosophy. 

In 1830 Alfred Tennyson (i 809-1 892), a young 
gradúate of Cambridge, pubHshed a thin duodécimo of 
154 pages entitled " Poems, Chiefly Lyrical." The 
pieces in this Httle volume, such as "The Sleeping 
Beauty," " Ode to Memory," and " Recollections of 
the Arabian Nights," were full of color, fragrance, 
melody ; but they had a dream-Hke character, and 
were without definite theme, resembhng an artist's 
studies or exercises in music — a few touches of the 
brush, a few sweet chords, but no aria. A number of 
them — "Claribel," "Lilian," "AdeHne," "Isabel," 
"Mariana," "Madeline" — were sketches of women ; 
not character portraits, like Browning's " Men and 
Women," but impressions of temperament, of delicately 
differentiated types of feminine beauty. In ' ' Mariana, ' ' 
expanded from a hint of the forsaken maid in Shak- 
spere's "Measure for Measure," "Mariana at the 
moated grange," the poet showed an art then peculiar, 
but since grown familiar, of heightening the central 



From the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 245 

feeling by landscape accessories. The level waste, the 

stagnant sluices, the neglected garden, the wind in the ^"^'^|{,t ^f 

single poplar, reénforce, by their monotonous sympathy, landscape. 

the loneliness, the hopeless waiting and weariness of Hfe 

in the one human figure of the poem. In " Mariana," 

the "Ode to Memory," and "The Dying Swan," it 

was the fens of Cambridge and of his native Lincoln- 

shire that furnished Tennyson's scenery : 

Stretched wide and wild, the waste enormous marsh, 

Where from the frequent bridge, 

Like emblems of infinity, 

The trenched waters run from sky to sky. 

A second collection, published in 1833, exhibited a 
greater scope and variety, but was still in his earher 
manner. The studies of feminine types were continued 
in "Margaret," " Fatima," "Eleanore," " Mariana in 
the South," and "A Dream of Fair Women," sug- 
gested by Chaucer's " Legend of Good Women." In 
' ' The Lady of Shalott ' ' the poet first touched the 
Arthurian legends. The subject is the same as that of 
"Elaine," in "The Idyls of the King," but the treat- 
ment is shadowy and even allegorical. In " CEnone " 
and "The Lotus Eaters " he handled Homeric sub- 
jects, but in a romantic fashion which contrasts markedly 
with the style of his later pieces, ' ' Ulysses ' ' and ' ' Ti- 
thonus. ' ' These last have the true classic severity, and 
are among the noblest specimens of weighty and sono- 
roüs blank verse in modern poetry. In general, Tenny- 
son's art is unclassical. It is rich, órnate, composite ; 
not statuesque so much as picturesque. He is a great xennyson's 
painter, and the critics complain that in passages calling an/decorate^ 
for movement and action — a battle, a tournament, or 
the like — his figures stand still as in a tablean ; and 
they contrast such passages unfavorably with scenes of 



246 Froni Chaucer to Tennyson. 

the same kind in Scott, and vvith Browning's spirited 
bailad, " How we Brought the Good News from Ghent 
to Aix." 

In "The Palace of Art " these elabórate pictorial 
effects were combined with allegory ; in " The Lotus 
Eaters," with that expressive treatment of landscape 
noted in "Mariana"; the lotus land, "in which it 
seenied always afternoon," reflecting and promoting 
the enchanted indolence of the héroes. Two of the 
pieces in this 1833 volume, "The May Queen" and 
" The Miller's Daughter," were Tennyson' s first poenis 
of the añections, and as ballads of simple rustic life they 
anticipated his more perfect idyls in blank verse, such 
idyisand as "Dora," "The Brook," " Edwin Morris," and 

lyrics. 

"The Gardener's Daughter." The songs in "The 
Miller's Daughter" had a more spontaneous lyrical 
movement than anything he had yet published, and 
foretokened the lovely songs which interlude the di- 
visions of "The Princess," the famous " Bugle Song," 
the no less famous " Cradle Song," and the rest. 

In 1833 Tennyson' s friend, Arthur Hallam, died, and 
the effect of this great sorrow upon the poet was to 
dcepen and strengthen the character of his genius. It 
turned his mind in upon itself, and set it brooding over 
questions which his poetry had so far left untouched ; 
the meaning of life and death, the uses of adversity, the 
future of the race, the immortality of the soul, and the 
dealings of God with mankind. 

Thou madest Death : and, lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 



"In 
Memoriam. 



His elegy on Hallam, " In Memoriam," was not 
published till 1850. He kcpt it by him all tiiose years, 
adding section after section, gathering up into it what- 



From the Death of Scott to the Prcsent Time. 247 

ever reflections crystallized about its central theme. It is 
his most intellectual and most individual work ; a great 
song of sorrow and consolation. In 1842 he pub- 
lished a third collection of poems, among which were 
" Locksley Hall," displaying a new strength of passion ; 
" Ulysses," suggested by a passage in Dante ; pieces of 
a speculative cast, like ' ' The Two Volees ' ' and ' ' The 
Vision of Sin"; the song " Break, Break, Break," 
which preluded " In Memoriam " ; and, lastly, some 
additional gropings toward the subject of the Arthurian 
romance, such as " Sir Galahad," " Sir Launcelot and 
Queen Guinevere," and " Morte d'Arthur." The last 
was in blank verse, and, as afterward incorporated in 
"The Passing of Arthur," forms one of the best 
passages in "The Idyls of the King." "The Princess, "xhe 
a Medley," published in 1849, represents the eclectic 
character of Tennyson's art ; a medieval tale with an 
admixture of modern sentiment and with the very 
modern problem of woman's sphere for its theme. 

The first four " Idyls of the King," 1859, with those 
since added, constitute, when taken together, an epic '^'"¿ 
poem on the oíd story of King Arthur. Tennyson went 
to Malory's " Morte Darthur" for his material, but the 
outline of the first idyl, "Enid," was taken from Lady 
Charlotte Guest's translation of the Welsh " Mabi- 
nogion." In the idyl of "Guinevere" Tennyson's 
genius reached its high-water mark. The interview 
between Arthur and his fallen queen is marked by a 
moral sublimity and a tragic intensity which move the 
soul as nobly as any scene in modern literature. Here, 
at least, the art is puré and not ' ' decorated ' ' ; the effect 
is produced by the simplest means, and all is just, 
natural, and grand. " Maud" — a love novel in verse — 
published in 1855, and considerably enlarged in 1856, 



Princess. 



' Idyls of the 



248 Froni Chatícer to Tennyson. 

had great sweetness and beauty, particularly in its 
"Maud." lyrical portions, but it was uneven in execution, im- 

perfect in design, and marred by lapses into mawkish- 
ness and excess in language. Since 1860 Tennyson 
has added much of permanent valué to his work, 
though litde that is novel in kind. His dramatic ex- 
periments, like " Queen Mary," "Harold," "Becket," 
"The Cup," and "The Foresters," are not, on the 
whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny 
dramatic power to the poet who has vvritten, upon one 
hand ' ' Guinevere ' ' and ' ' The Passing of Arthur, ' ' 
and upon the other the homely dialectic monologue of 
' ' The Northern Farmer. ' ' 

' ' The Idyls of the King ' ' took their final shape in 
1872. " Enoch Arden," 1864, carried on the vein of 
more properly idyllic poetry — the poetry, i. e., of 
lowly or rustic life — and won a wider popularity than 
"The May Queen" and "The Miller's Daughter." 
Dialectic experiments like ' ' The Northern Cobbler ' ' 
continued the studies of Lancashire types. " Rizpah," 
Latestpoems. i" the volume of "Ballads," 1880, gave further proof 
of the lauréate' s power in the use of dramatic mono- 
logue. " Vastness," published in " Demeter and other 
Poems," 1892, has had many admirers ; while the little 
poem that closes this last volume, " Crossing the Bar," 
is as deep in feeling and as perfect in execution as any- 
thing in the work of Tennyson' s best days and has 
become a universal favorite. 

When we tire of Tennyson' s smooth perfection, of an 
art that is over exquisite and a beauty that is well-nigh 
too beautiful, and crave a rougher touch and a mean- 
ing that will not yield itself too readily, we turn to the 
thorny pages of his great contemporary, Robert Brown- 
ing (18 1 2-1889). Dr. Holmes says that Tennyson is 



From the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 249 



white nicat and Browning is dark meat. A masculine 

taste, it is inferrcd, is sliown \\\ a prefercnce for the í^mw/inK*"** 

gamier flavor. Browning makes us think ; his poems «-"«"irastcd. 

are puzzles, and funiish busincss for " Brovvning So- 

cieties." Thcre are no Tennyson societies because 

Tennyson is his own interpreten Intellect in a poet 

niay display itself quite as properly in the construction 

of his poem as in its content ; we vakie a building for its 

architecturc, and not entirely for the aniount of tiniber 

in it. Browning's thought never wears so thin as 

Tennyson' s sometimes does in his latest verse, vvhere 

the trick of his style goes on of itself with nothing 

behind it. Tennyson, at his worst, is weak. Browning, 

vvhen not at his best, is hoarse. Hoarseness, in itself, 

is no sign of strength. In Browning, however, the 

failure is in art, not in thought. 

He chooses his subjects from abnornial character 
types, such as are prescnted, for examplc, in "Caliban 
upon Setcbos," "Tlie Cirammarian's P\uieral," " My 
Last Duchess," and "Mr. Sludge, the Médium." 
These are all psychological studies, in which the poet 

, . ^ . ' ; Browning; an 

gets mto the mner consciousness of a monster, a pedant, artisi of the 

a criminal, and a quack, and gives their point of view. 

They are dramatic soliloquies ; but the poet's self- 

identification with each of his creations, in turn, remains 

incomplctc. His curious, analytic observation, his way 

of looking at the soul from outside, gives a doubleness 

to the monologues in his "Dramatic Lyrics," 1845, 

" Men and Women," 1855, " Dramatis Personae," 

1864, and other collections of the kind. The words 

are the words of Caliban or Mr. Sludge, but the voice 

is the voice of Robert Browning. 

His first complete poem, " Paracelsus," 1835, aimed 
to give the true iii^ardness of the career of the famous 



250 



F7-oni Chaucer to Teiuiysoyi. 



His 
obscurity. 



Ballads and 
lyrics. 



sixteenth century doctor, whose ñame became a syn- 
onym with charlatán. His second, "Sordello," 1840, 
traced the struggles of an Italian poet who lived before 
Dante, and could not reconcile his life with his art. 
"Paracelsus" was hard, but "Sordello" was incom- 
prehensible. Browning has denied that he was ever 
perversely crabbed or obscure. Every great artist must 
be allowed to say things in his own way, and obscurity 
has its artistic uses, as the Gothic builders knew. But 
there are two kinds of obscurity in literature. One is 
inseparable from the subtlety and difficulty of the 
thought or the compression and pregnant indirectness 
of the phrase. Instances of this occur in the clear 
deeps of Dante, Shakspere, and Goethe. The other 
comes from a vice of style, a wilfully enigmatic and 
unnatural way of expressing thought. Both kinds of 
obscurity exist in Browning. He was a deep and subtle 
thinker, but he was also a very eccentric writer ; abrupt, 
harsh, disjointed. 

It has been well said that the reader of Browning 
leams a new dialect. But one need not grudge the 
labor that is rewarded with an intellectual pleasure so 
peculiar and so stimulating. The odd, grotesque im- 
pression made by his poetry arises, in part, from his 
desire to use the artistic valúes of ugliness, as well as of 
obscurity ; to avoid the shallow prettiness that comes 
from blinking the disagreeable truth : not to leave the 
saltness out of the sea. Whenever he emerges into 
clearness, as he does in hundreds of places, he is a poet 
of great qualities. There are a fire and a swing in his 
" Cavalier Tunes," and in pieces like "The Glove " 
and "The Lost Leader" ; and humor in such ballads as 
' ' The Pied Piper of Hamelin ' ' and ' ' The Soliloquy of 
the Spanish Cloister," which appeal to the most con- 



From ihe Death of Scott lo the Present Time. 251 

servative reader. He seldom deals directly in the 
pathetic, but now and then, as in " Evelyn Hope," 
"The Last Ride Together," or "The Incident of the 
French Camp," a tenderness comes over the strong verse 

as sheathes 
A film the mother eagle's eye 
When her bruised eaglet breathes. 

Perhaps the most astonishing example of Browning's 
mental vigor is the huge composition entitled "The 
Ring and the Book," 1868, a narrative poem in twenty- '"^^1^'"^ 
one thousand Unes in which the same story is repeated Book." 
eleven times in eleven different ways. It is the story of 
a criminal trial which occurred at Rome about 1700, 
the trial of one Count Guido for the murder of his 
young wife. First the poet tells the tale himself ; then 
he tells what one half the world said and what the 
other ; then he gives the deposition of the dying girl, 
the testimony of witnesses, the speech made by the 
count in his own defense, the arguments of counsel, 
and, finally, the judgment of the pope. So wonderful 
are Browning's resources in casuistry, and so cunningly 
does he ravel the intricate motives at play in this 
tragedy and lay bare the secrets of the heart, that the 
interest increases at each repetition of the tale. He 
studied the Renaissance carefully, because he found it 
a rich quarry of spiritual monstrosities, strange out- 
croppings of fanaticism, superstition, and moral and 
mental distortion of all shapes. It furnished him espe- 
cially with a great variety of ecclesiastical types, such as 
are painted in " Fra Lippo Lippi," "The Heretic's 
Tragedy," and "The Bishop Orders his Tomb in St. 
Praxed's Church." 

Browning's dramatic instinct always attracted him to 
the stage. His tragedy, " Strañord " (1837), was 



252 From Chaucer to Tennyson, 

written for Macready, and put on at Covent Carden 
Browning's Tlicater, but without pronounced success. He wrote 

dramas. . ^ . . 

many fine dramatic poems, like " Pippa Passes," 
"Colombe's Birthday," and " In a Balcony"; and at 
least two good acting plays, ' ' Luria ' ' and ' ' A Blot in 
the 'Scutcheon." The motive of the last-named 
tragedy is somewhat strained and fantastic, but it is, 
notwithstanding, very effective on the stage. It gives 
ene an unwonted thrill to listen to a play, by a contem- 
porary English writer, which is really literature. One 
gcts a faint idea of what ¡t must have been to assist at 
the lirst night of " Hamlet." 



1. Henry Morley : "English Literature in the 
Reign of Victoria." Tauchnitz Series. 

2. E. C. Stedman : " Victorian Poets." Boston: 
1886. 

3. DiCKENS : "Pickvvick Papers," "Nicholas 
Nickleby," "David Copperfield," " Bleak House,' 
"A Tale of Two Cities." 

4. Thackerav : " Vanity Fair," "Pendennis,' 
" Henry Esmond," " The Newcomes," 

5. George Eliot : "Scenes of Clerical Life,' 
"The Mili on the Floss," "Silas Marner," "Romola,' 
•' Adam Bedc," " Middlemarch." 

6. Macaulay : "Essays," "Lays of Ancicnt Rome.' 

7. Carlyle : " Sartor Resartus," " Frcnch Revo 
lution," Essays on "History," " Signs of the Times,' 
' ' Characteristics, " " Burns, " " Scott, " " Voltaire, ' 
and "Coethe." 

8. ' ' The Works of Alfred Tennyson. ' ' 6 vols. Lon- 
don : 1872. 

9. ' ' Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert 
Browning." 2 vols. London : 1880. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 

GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 

The Prioress. 

[From the general prologue to "The Canterbury Tales."] 

There was also a nonne, a prioresse, 

That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy ; 

Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy ; 

And she was clepéd i madame Englentine. 

Ful wel she sang the servicé devine, 

Entunéd in hire nose ful swetély ; 

And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly» 

After the scole of Stratford-atté-Bowe,' 

For Frenche of París was to hire unknowe. 

At mete was she wel ytaught withalle ; 

She lette no morsel from hire lippés falle, 

Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. 

Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe, 

That no drope ne fell upon hire brest. 

In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest.'' 

Hire over lippé wipéd she so cieñe 

That in hire cuppé was no ferthing^ sene 

Of gresé, whan she dronken hadde hire draught. 

Ful semely after hire mete she raught.» 

And sikerly ' she was of gret disport 

And ful plesánt and amiable of port, 

And peinéd hire to contrefeten chere 

Of court,» and ben estatelich of manére 

And to ben holden digne « of reverence. 

But for to speken of hire conscience, 

1 Callad. a Neatly. » Stratford on the Bow (river); a small village 

•where such Frcnch as was spoken woiild be provincial. •• Dclight. 

6 Farlhing, bit. o Reached. ' Surely. 8 Took pains to imítate 

court manners. » Worlhy. 

255 



256 Front Chaucer to Tennyson. 

She was so charitable and so pitoús, 
She woldé wepe if that she saw a mous 
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. 
Of smalé houndés hadde she, that she fedde 
With rosted flesh and milk and wastel brede.* 
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, 
Or if men smote it with a yerdé "^ smerte : ' 
And all was conscience and tendré herte. 

Palamon's Farewell to Emelie. 

[From " The Knightes Tale."] 

Naught may the woful spirit in myn herte 

Declare o * point of all my sorwes smerte 

To you, my lady, that I lové most. 

But I bequethe the service of my gost 

To you aboven every creatúre, 

Sin ^ that my lif ne may no lenger dure. 

Alas the wo ! alas the peines stronge 

That I for you have suffered, and so longe ! 

Alas the deth ! alas min Emelie ! 

Alas departing of our compagnie ! 

Alas min hertés quene ! alas my wif ! 

Min hertés ladie, ender of my lif! 

What is this world? what axen" men to have? 

Now with his love, now in his coldé grave 

Alone withouten any compagnie. 

Farewel my swete, farewel min Emelie, 

And softé take me in your armes twey,' 

For love of God, and herkeneth * what I sey. 

Emelie in the Garden. 

[From "The Knightes Tale."] 

Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day, 
Till it felle onés in a morwe * of l\lay 
That Emelie, that fayrer was to sene " 
Than is the lilie on hire stalké grene. 
And fresher than the May with flourés newe, 
(For with the rosé colour strof hire hewe ; 

1 Fine bread. 2 Stick. 3 Smartly. ■* One. 5 Since. 

7 Two. 8 Hearken 9 Morning. 10 See. 



I 

I 



Anonymous Ballads. 257 

I n'ot^ which was the fayner of hem two) 
Er ¡t was day, as she was wont to do, 
She was arisen and all redy dight,* 
For May wol have no slogardie a-night. 
The seson priketh every gentil herte, 
And maketh him out of his slepe to sterte, 
And sayth, " Arise, and do thin observánce." 
This maketh Emelie han remembránce 
To don honoúr to May, and for to rise. 
Yclothéd was she fresh for to devise.^ 
Hire yelwe here was browded in a tresse 
Behind hire back, a yerdé long I gesse. 
And in the garden at the sonne uprist* 
She walketh up and doun wher as hire list.* 
She gathereth flourés, partie white and red, 
To make a sotel " gerlond for hire hed, 
And as an ángel hevenlich she song. 

ANONYMOUS BALLADS OF THE SIXTEENTH AND 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 

Waly, Waly but Love be Bonny. 

WALY,' waly up the bank, 
And waly, waly down the brae,* 

And waly, waly yon burn ® side, 
Where I and my love wont to gae. 

1 lean'd my back unto an aik,'" 
I thought it was a trusty tree ; 

But first it bow'd and syne " it brak, 
Sae my true love did lightly me. 

O waly, waly but love be bonny, 

A little time while it is new ; 
But when 'tis auld it waxeth cauld, 

And fades away like the morning dew. 

O wherefore should I busk ^^ my head ? 
Or wherefore should I kame " my hair ? 

1 Know not. 2 Dressed. 3 Describe. 4 Sunrise. 6 Wherever it 
pleasesher. 6 Subtle, cunningly enwoven. ? An exclamation of sorrow, 

woe! alas! s Hillside. 9 Brook. 10 Oak. 11 Then. 12 Adorn. 13 Comb. 



258 Froin Chaucer to Tenyiyson. 

For my true love has me forsook, 
And says he'll never love me mair. 

Now Arthur-Seat shall be my bed, 
The sheets shall ne'er be fyl'd by me ; 

Saint Anton's well ^ shall be my drink, 
Sinn my true love has forsaken me. 

Martinmas' wind, when wilt thou blaw 
And shake the green leaves ofi' the tree ? 

O gentle death, when wilt thou come? 
For of my life I'm aweary. 

'Tis not the frost that freezes fell, 

Ñor blawing snow's inclemency ; 
'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry, 

But my love's heart grown cauld to me. 

When we came in by Glasgow town 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was ciad in the black velvet, 

And I niyself in cramasie.- 

But had I wist, before I kissed, 

That love had been sae ill to win, 
I'd lock'd my heart in a case of gold, 

And pinn'd it with a silver pin. 

Oh, oh, if my young babe were born, 

And set upon the nurse's knee, 
And I myself were dead and gane, 

And the green grass growing over me ! 

BoNNiE George Campbell. 

HiE upon Highlands and low upon Tay, 
Bonnie George Campbell rade out on a day. 
Saddled and bridled and gallant rade he ; 
Hame cam' his horse, but never cam' he. 

Out cam' his auld mother, greetíng * fu' sair ; 
And out cam' his bonnie bride, rivíng her hair. 

1 At the foot of Arthur's Seat, a cliff near Edinburgh. « Crimson. » Weeping, 



Edmund Spenser. 259 



Saddled and bridled and booted rade he ; 
Toom' hanie caní' tlie saddle, but never cam' he. 

" My meadow Hes green and my corn ¡s unshorn ; 
My barn is to bigg"'' and my babie's unborn." 
Saddled and bridled and booted rade he ; 
Toom cam' the saddle, but never cam' he. 

EDMUND SPENSER. 

The Suitor's Life. 

FuLL little knowest thou that hast not tride, 
What hell it is in suing long to bidé ; 
To lose good days that niight be better spent ; 
To vvast long nights in pensive discontent : 
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; 
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow ; 
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peere's :' 
To have thy asking, yet waite nianie yeers, 
To iVet thy soule with crosses and with cares ; 
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires : 
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne, 
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone ! 

The Music of the Bowkr of Rliss. 

[From " The Faerie Queciie," Book II., Canto XII. ] 

Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, 

Of all that mote ^ delight a daintie eare, 

Such as attonce ^ might not on living ground, 

Save in this jxiradise, be heard elsewhere : 

Rigiit hard it was for wight which did it heare, 

To read what manncr of nuisic tliat mote bee ; 

For all that pleasing is to living eare 

Was there consorted in one harmonee ; 

Birdes, voices, Instruments, windes, waters, all agree. 

The joyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade, 
Their notes unto the voyce attempred sweet ; 
Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made 

1 Empty. « Biiild. a A refereiice to Lord Rurleigh's hostility to the poet. 
4 Mighl. 6 At once. 



26o From Chaticer to Tennyson. 

To th' instruments divine respondence meet ; 
The silver sounding instruments did meet 
With tlie base' murmure of the waters fall ; 
The waters fall with difTerence discroet, 
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did cali ; 
The gentle warbling wind low answeréd to all. 

The whiles some one did chaunt tiiis lovely lay ; 
Ah ! see, whoso fayre thing doest faina* to see, 
In springing flowre the image of thy day ! 
Ah ! see the virgin rose, how sweetly shee 
Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee, 
That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may ! 
Lo ! see, soone after how more bold and free 
Her bared bosomo she doth broad displav ; 
Lo ! see, soone after how she fades and falls away. 

So passeth, in the passing of a day. 

Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre ; 

Ne more doth florish after first decay, 

That earst " was sought to deck both bed aiul bowre 

Of many a lady, and many a paramowre ! 

Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime,'' 

For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre : 

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, 

Whilst loving thou mayst lovéd be with equall crime. 

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 

SONNF.T XC. 

Then hate me when thou wilt : if ever, now : 

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, 
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, 

And do not drop in for an after loss. 
Ah ! do not when my hoart hath scaped this sorrow, 

Come in the rearwartl ^^^ a conquercd woe ; 
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 

To linger out a purposed overthrow. 
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, 

When other petty griefs have done their spite ; 
1 Bass. 2 Rejoice. s First, formerly. * SpriiiR. 



William Shakspere. 261 

But in the onset come : So shall I taste 
At first the very worst of fortune's niight ; 

And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, 
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so. 

SONG. 

[From " As You Like It."] 

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
Thou art not so unkind 

As man's ingratitude ; 
Thy tooth is not so keen, 
Because thou art not seen, 

Although thy breath be rude. 
Heigh ho ! sing heigh ho ! unto the green holly. 
Most friendship is feigning, niost loving mere foUy. 
Then heigh ho ! the holly ! 
This life is most jolly. 

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
Thou dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot ; 
Though thou the waters warp, 
Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remembered not. 
Heigh ho ! sing heigh ho ! etc. 

The Sleep of Kings. 

[From " Henry IV.," Part II.] 
How many thousand of my poorest subjects 
Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gentle sleep, 
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee. 
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, 
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
Under the canopy of costly state, 
And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody? 
O thou duU god, why liest thou with the vile, 



202 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

In loathsome beds ; and leav'st the kingly couch, 

A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell ? 

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 

In eradle of the rude imperious surge ; 

And in the visitatlon of the winds, 

Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 

With deaf 'ning clamors in the slippery clouds, 

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? 

Can'st thou, O partial sleep ! give thy repose 

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; 

And, in the calmest and most stillest night, 

With all appliances and means to boot, 

Deny it to a king ? Then, happy low-lie-down ! 

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. 

The Seven Ages of Man. 

[From "As You Like It."] 

All the world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players : 
They have their e.xits and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. 
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel, 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, 
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful bailad 
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, 
Full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard, 
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, 
In fair round belly, with good capón lined, 
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 
Full of wise saws and modern instances ; 
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts 
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, 
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side ; 
His youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide 



William Shakspere. 263 

For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 

And whistles ¡n his sound. Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange, eventful history, 

Is second childishness and mere oblivion, 

Sans ^ teetii, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

Hamlet's Soliloquy. 

To be, or not to be, that is the question : 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And, by opposing, end them ? To die — to sleep — 
No more ; and, by a sleep, to say we end 
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep ; 
To sleep ! perchance to dream ; ay, there's the rub ; 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give US pause : there's the respect, 
That makes calamity of so long life. 
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of disprized love, the lavv's delay, 
The insolence of office and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
When he himself might his quietus take 
With a bare bodkin P^ Who would fardéis^ bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life ; 
But that the dread of something after death, 
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveler returns, puzzles the will. 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have, 
Than fly to others that we know not of ? 
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; 
And thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the palé cast of thought, 
And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
1 Without. 2 Small sword. 8 Burdens. 



264 Froni Chaucer to Tennyso7i. 

With this regard, their currents turn away 
And lose the ñame of action. 

frangís BACON. 
Of Death. 

[From the " Essays."] 

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark ; and as 
that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the 
other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of 
sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious ; but 
the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in 
religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and 
of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books of 
mortification, that a man should think with himself what the 
pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured ; 
and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the 
whole body is corrupted and dissolved ; when many times 
death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb ; for 
the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by 
him that spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was 
well said, Pompa tnortis niagis terret quain viors ipsa. ^ Groans 
and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, 
and blacks and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. 
It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind 
of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death, 
and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man 
hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of 
him. Revenge triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honor 
aspireth to it ; grief flieth to it ; fear preoccupateth ^ it. It is 
as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little infant perhaps 
the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest 
pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who, for the 
time, scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and 
bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolors of 
death. But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is 
Nunc dhnitíis,^ when a man hath obtained worthy ends and 
expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to 
good fame, and extinguisheth envy : Extinctus aniabitur ideni.^ 

1 The shows of death terrify more than death itself. 2 Anticipates. 
3 Now thou dismissest us. 4 The same man will be loved when dead. 



Francis Bacon. 265 



Of Adversity. 

It was a high speech of Séneca (after the manner of the 
Stoics), that "the good things which belong to prosperity are 
to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are 
to be admired" — Bona rerinn secundarum optabilia, adver- 
sarían tnirabilia. Certainly, if miracles be the command over 
nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher 
speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen), 
" It is true greatness to ha ve in one the frailty of a man and 
the security of a god" — Veré niagnunt habere fragilitateni 
homiftis, securitatem dei. This would have done better in 
poesy, where transcendencies are more allowed ; and the poets 
indeed have been busy with it ; for it is in effect the thing 
which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, 
which seemeth not to be without mystery ; ^ nay, and to have 
some approach to the state of a Christian ; "that Hercules, 
when he went to unbind Promethetcs (by whom human nature 
is represented), sailed the length of the great ocean in an 
earthen pot or pitcher," lively describing Christian resolution, 
that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh through the waves of 
the world. But, to speak in a mean,^ the virtue of prosperity 
is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in 
moráis is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing 
of the Oíd Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, 
which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revela- 
tion of God's favor. Yet, even in the Oíd Testament, if you 
listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs 
as carols ; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more 
in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of 
Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes ; 
and adversity is not without comfort and hopes. We see in 
needle-works and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a 
lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a 
dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground : judge, 
therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the 
eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant 
when they are incensed ^ or crushed : for prosperity doth best 
discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. 

1 An allegorical meanhig. 2 Moderately, that is, without poetic figures. 
3 Burnt. 



266 From Chaucer to TenJiyson. 

BEN JONSON. 

SoNG TO Celia. 

Drink to me only with thine eyes, 

And I will pledge with mine ; 
Or leave a kiss but in the cup, 

And ni not look for wine. 
The thirst that from the soul doth rise 

Doth ask a drink divine ; 
But might I of Jove's néctar sup 

I would not change for thine. 

I sent thee late a rosy wreath, 

Not so much honoring thee, 
As giving it a hope that there 

It could not withered be. 
But thou thereon did'st only breathe 

And sent'st it back to me : 
Since when it grows and smells, I swear, 

Not of itself, but thee. 

LoNG Life. 

It is not growing like a tree 

In bulk, doth make men better be ; 

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, 

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and seré : 
A lily of a day 
Is fairer far in May, 

Although it fall and die that night ; 

It was the plant and flower of light. 

In small proportions we just beauty see ; 

And in short measures life may perfect be. 

Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke. 

Underneath this sable herse 
Lies the subject of all verse, 
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; 
Death, ere thou hast slain another, 
Learn'd and fair and good as she, 
Time shall throw a dart at thee. 



John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. 267 

JOHN FLETCHER AND FRANGÍS BEAUMONT. 
A SoNG OF True Love Dead. 

[From " The Maid's Tragedy."] 
Lay a garland on my herse 

Of the dismal yew ; 
Maidens willow branches bear ; 

Say I died true : 
My love was false, but I was firm 

From my hour of birth : 
Upon my buried body lie 

Lightly, gentle earth. 

A SoNG OF Cruel Love.' 

[From " Rollo, Duke of Normandy."] 

Take, oh, take those lips away, 

That so sweetly were forsworn. 
And those eyes, the break of day, 

Lights that do mislead the morn ; 
But my kisses bring again, 
Seáis of love, though sealed in vain. 

Hide, oh, hide those hills of snow, 

Which thy frozen bosom bears, 
On whose tops the pinks that grow 

Are of those that April wears ; 
But first set my poor heart free, 
Bound in those icy chains by thee. 

Sweet Melancholy.'' 

[From " The Nice Valor."] 

Hence, all you vain delights. 
As short as are the nights 

Wherein you spend your folly ! 
There's naught in this life sweet, 
If man were wise to see't, 

But only melancholy : 

O sweetest melancholy ! 

1 The first stanza of this song was probably Shakspere's. 
a This should be compared with Milton's " II Penseroso." 



268 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Welcome, folded arms and fixéd eyes, 

A sigh that piercing mortifies, 

A look that's fastened on the ground, 

A tongue chained up without a sound ! 

Fountain-heads and pathless groves, 

Places which palé passion loves, 

Moonlight walks when all the fowls 

Are warmly housed, save bats and owls, 

A midnight bell, a parting groan, 

These are the sounds we feed upon ; 

Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley : 

Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. 



JOHN MILTON. 

Fame. 

[From " Lycidas."] 

Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care 
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 
And strictly medítate the thankless Muse? 
Were it not better done, as others use, 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair ? 
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
(That last infirmity of noble mind) 
To scorn delights and Uve laborious days ; 
But the fair guardón when we hope to find, 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorréd shears,' 
And slits the thin-spun Ufe. "But not the praise, 
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears : 
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. 
Ñor in the glistering foil 
Set off to the world, ñor in broad rumor lies, 
But Uves and spreads aloft by those puré eyes 
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 
As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." 
Átropos, the Fate who cuts the thread of life. 



John Milton. 269 



The Pleasures of Melancholy. 

[From " II Penseroso."] 

SwEET bird that shun'st the noise of folly, 

Most musical, most melancholy ! 

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among 

I woo, to hear thy even-song ; 

And, missing thee, I walk unseen 

On the dry smooth-shaven green, 

To behold the wandering moon, 

Riding near her highest noon, 

Like one that had been led astray 

Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 

And oft, as if her head she bowed, 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-oíT curfevv sound, 

Over some wide-watered shore, 

Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 

Or, if the air will not permit, 

Some still removed place will fit, 

Where glowing embers through the room 

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 

Far from all resort of mirth, 

Save the cricket on the hearth, 

Or the bellman's drowsy charm ^ 

To bless the doors from nightly harm. 

But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloisters palé, 
And love the high embowéd roof, 
With antique pillars massy-proof. 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light. 
There let the pealing organ blow, 
To the fuU-voiced quire below, 
In service high and anthem clear, 
As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 
Dissolve me into ecstasies, 
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 

The watchman's cali. 



270 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

And may at last my weary age 
Find out the peaceful hermitage, 
The hairy gown and mossy cell, 
Where I may sit and rightly spell 
Of every star that heaven doth shew, 
And every herb that sips the dew, 
Till oíd experience do attain 
To something Hke prophetic strain. 

These pleasures, Melancholy, give ; 
And I with thee will choose to live. 

The Protection of Conscience. 

[From " Comus."] 

Scene : A wild wood ; night. 
Lady: 

My brothers, when they saw me wearied out 

With this long way, resolving here to lodge 

Under the spreading favor of these pines, 

Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side 

To bring me berries, or such cooHng fruit 

As the kind hospitable woods provide. 

They left me then when the gray-hooded Even, 

Like a sad votarist in palmer' s weed, 

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain. 

But where they are, and why they came not back, 

Is now the labor of my thoughts. 'Tis likeliest 

They had engaged their wandering steps too far ; 

And envious darkness, ere they could return, 

Had stolen them from me. Else, O thievish Night, 

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, 

In thy dark lantern thus cióse up the stars 

That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps 

With everlasting oil, to give due light 

To the misled and lonely traveler ? 

This is the place, as well as I may guess, 

Whence even now the tumult of load mirth 

Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear ; 

Yet nought but single darkness do I find. 

What might this be ? A thousand fantasies 

Begin to throng into my memory, 

Of calling shapes and beckoning shadows diré, 



John Milton. 271 



And airy tongues that syllable men's ñames 
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 
By a strong siding champion, Conscience. 

welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, 
Thou hovering ángel girt with golden wings, 
And thou unblemished form of Chastity ! 

1 see ye visibly, and now believe 

That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, 
Would send a ghstening guardián, if need were, 
To keep my life and honor unassailed. 

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud 
Turn forth her sUver lining on the night ? 
I did not err : there does a sable cloud 
Turn forth her silver lining on the night, 
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove. 

Invocation to Light. 

[From " Paradise Lost."] 

Thee i revisit safe, 
And feel thy sovereign vital lamp ; but thou 
Revisitest not these eyes, that roU in vain 
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn ; 
So thick a drop serene^ hath quenched their orbs, 
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more 
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt 
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 
Smit with the love of sacred song ; but chief 
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, 
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, 
Nightly I visit : ñor sometimes forget 
Those other two equaled with me in fate. 
So were I equaled with them in renown, 
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,^ 
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets oíd : 
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move 
1 Theg^tía serena, or cataract. 2 Homer. 



272 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Harmonious numbers ; as the wakeful bird 

Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid 

Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year 

Seasons return, but not to me returns 

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 

Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark, 

Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 

Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 

Presented with a universal blank 

Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, 

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 

So much the rather thou, celestial Light, 

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 

Irradíate ; there plant eyes, all mist from thence 

Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 

Of things invisible to mortal sight. 

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.' 

AvENGE, o Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even them who kept thy truth so puré of oíd, 
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, 

Forget not : in thy book record their groans 

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 

The triple tyrant,'' that from these may grow 
A hundred-fold, who, having learnt thy way, 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.^ 

1 This sonnet refers to the persecution instituted in 1655 bythe Duke of 
Savoy against the Vaudois Protestants. 

2 The pope, who wore the triple crovvn or tiara. 

» The papacy, with which the Protestant reformers identified Babylon the 
Great, the "Scarlet Woman " of Revelaiion. 



Sir Thomas Browne. 273 

SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

The Vanity of Monuments. 

[From " Urn Burial."] 

There is no antidote against the opium of time, which 
temporally considereth all things. Our fathers find their 
graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may 
be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce 
forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and 
oíd families last not three oaks . . . The iniquity^ of 
oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the 
memory of men vvithout distinction to merit of perpetuity. 
Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids ? Herostratus 
lives, that burnt the temple of Diana ; he is almost lost that 
built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, 
confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities 
by the advantage of our good ñames, since bad have equal 
durations and Thersites^ is like to live as long as Agamemnon. 
Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether 
there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that 
stand remembered in the known account of time ? Without 
the favor of the everlasting register, the first man had been as 
unknown as the last, and Methusaleh's long life had been his 
only chronicle. 

Oblivion is not to be hired.^ The greater part must be con- 
tení to be as though they had not been, to be found in the 
register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven 
ñames make up the first story, and the reported ñames ever 
since contain not one living century. The number of the 
dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time 
far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox ? 
Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic which scarce 
stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina* of 
life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to 
die ; since our longest sun sets at right descensions and makes 
but winter arches, and, therefore, it cannot be long before we 
lie down in darkness and have our light in ashes ; since the 
brother^ of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and 

1 Injustice. 2 See Shakspere's " Troilus and Cressida." 3 That is, bribed, 
bought off. 4 The goddess of childbirth. We must die to be born again. 
6 Sleep. 



274 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

time that grows oíd in itself bids us hope no long duration ; 
diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation. . . . 

There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. What- 
ever hath no beginning may be confident of no end. AU 
others have a dependent being and within the reach of de- 
struction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that 
cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of omnipotency, 
to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the 
power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality 
frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after 
death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can 
only' destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, 
either of our bodies or ñames hath directly promised no 
duration. Wherein there is so much of chance that the 
boldest expectants have found unhappy frustrations, and to 
hold long subsistence seems but a scape^ in oblivion. Bul 
man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the 
grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster, ñor 
omitting ceremonies of bravery* in the infamy of his nature. 



JOHN DRYDEN. 

The Character of Zimri.* 

[From " Absalom and Achitophel."] 

In the first rank of these did Zimri stand, 
A man so various that he seemed to be 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
Stiflf in opinions, always in the wrong, 
Was everything by turns, and nothing long ; 
But in the course of one revolving moon 
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
With something new to wish or to enjoy ! 
Railing and praising were his usual themes, 
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes : 
So over-violent or over-civil 

That is, the only one who can. 2 Freak. 8 Ostentation. 
^ This is a satirical sketch of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. 



Jonathan Swift. 275 



That every man with him was God or Devil. 

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 

Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 

Beggared by fools whom still he found ^ too late, 

He had his jest, and they had his estáte. 

He laughed himself from court ; then sought relief 

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief : 

For spite of him, the weight of business fell 

To Absalom and wise Achitophel.^ 

Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft, 

He left not faction, but of that was left. 

The Cheats of Hope. 

[From " Aurengzebe."] 

When i consider life, 'tis all a cheat ; 
Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit, 
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay ; 
To-morrow's falser than the former day, 
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest 
With some new joys, cuts off what we possessed. 
Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, 
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain. 
And from the dregs of life think to receive 
What the first sprightly running could not give. 
I'm tired of waiting for this chymic^ gold 
Which fools US young and beggars us when oíd. 



JONATHAN SWIFT. 
The Emperor of Lilliput. 

[From " Gulliver's Travels."] 

He ís taller by almost the breadth of my nail than any of 
his court ; which alone is enough to strike an awe into the 
beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an 
Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexión olive, his counte- 
nance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his 
motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. He was then 
past his prime, being twenty-eight years and three quarters 

1 Found out, detected. 4 The Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury. 3 The gold which the alchemists tried to make from base metáis. 



276 Froni Chaucer to Tennyson. 

oíd, of which he had reigned about seven in great felicity, and 
generally victorious. For the better convenience of behold- 
¡ng him, I lay on my side, so that my face was parallel to his, 
and he stood but three yards off ; however, I have had him 
since many times in my hand, and therefore cannot be 
deceived in the description. His dress was very plain and 
simple, and the fashion of it between the Asiatic and the 
European ; but he had on his head a light helmet of gold, 
adorned with jewels and a plume on the crest. He held his 
sword drawn in his hand to defend himself, if I should happen 
to break loóse ; it was almost three inches long : the hilt and 
scabbard were gold enriched with diamonds. His voice was 
shrill, but very clear and articúlate, and I could distinctly hear 
it when I stood up. 

The Struldbrugs. 

[From " Gulliver's Travels."] 

One day in much good company, I was asked by a person of 
quality whether I had seen any of their Struldbrugs, or immor- 
tals? I said I had not, and desired he would explain to me 
what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal 
creature. He told me that sometimes, though very rarely, a 
child happened to be born in a family with a red circular spot 
in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an 
infallible mark that it should never die. . . . He said these 
births were so rare that he did not believe there could be above 
eleven hundred Struldbrugs of both sexes in the whole king- 
dom ; of which he computed about fifty in the metrópolis, and 
among the rest, a young girl born about three years ago ; that 
these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere 
effect of chance ; and the children of the Struldbrugs them- 
selves were equally mortal with the rest of the people. . . . 
After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the 
Struldbrugs among them. He said they commonly acted like 
mortals till about thirty years oíd ; after which, by degrees, 
they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they 
carne to fourscore. This he learned from their own con- 
fession ; for otherwise, there not being above two or three of 
that species born in an age, they were too few to form a 
general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, 
which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they 



Jonathan Swift. 277 



had not only all the follies and infirmities of other oíd men, 
but many more, which aróse from the dreadful prospect of 
never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, 
covetous, moróse, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship 
and dead to all natural affection, which never descended 
below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are 
their prevailing passions. But those objects against which 
their envy seems principally directed are the vices of the 
younger sort and the deaths of the oíd. By reflecting on the 
former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of 
pleasure ; and whenever they see a funeral they lament and 
repine that others are gone to a harbor of rest, to which they 
themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remem- 
brance of anything but what they learned and observed in 
their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. 
And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to 
depend on common tradition than upon their best recollec- 
tions. The least miserable among them appear to be those 
who turn to dotage and entirely lose their memories ; these 
meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many 
bad qualities which abound in others. . . . At ninety, they 
lose their teeth and hair ; they have at that age no distinction 
of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without 
relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still 
continué, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they 
forget the common appellation of things, and the ñames of 
persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and 
relatives. For the same reason they never can amuse them- 
selves with reading, because their memory will not serve to 
carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end ; and 
by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment 
whereof they might otherwise be capable. . . . They are 
despised and hated by all sorts of people ; when one of them 
is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded 
very particularly. . . . They were the most mortifying 
sight I ever beheld ; and the women were homelier than the 
men, Beside the usual deformities in extreme oíd age, they 
acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their 
number of years, which is not to be described ; and among 
half a dozen I soon distinguished which was the eldest, 
although there was not above a century or two between them. 



278 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

ALEXANDER POPE. 

A Character of Addison. 

[From the " Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot."] 

Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles and fair fame inspires ; 
Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse, and Uve with ease : 
Should sucli a man, too fond to rule alone, 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne ; 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
And hate, for arts that caused himself to risa ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike ; 
Alike reserved to blame or to commend, 
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged ; 
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; 
Like Caio,^ give his little Senate laws, 
And sit attentive to his own applause ; 
While wits and templars ^ every sentence raise. 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise — 
Who but must laugh if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? 

An Ornament to Her Sex. 

[From the " Epistle of the Characters of Women."] 
See how the world its veterans rewards ! 
A youth of frolic, an oíd age of cards ; 
Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, 
Young without lovers, oíd without a friend ; 
A fop their passion, but theír prize a sot ; 
Alive, ridiculous, and dead, forgot. 
Ah ! Friend,^ to dazzle let the vain design ; 
To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine ! 
That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the Ring * 

1 A reference to Addison 's tragedy of " Cato." 

2 Young lawyers resident in tlie temple. See Spenser's " Prothalamion.' 

3 Martha Blount, a dear friend of the poet's. 

4 The fashionable promenade in Hyde Park. 



Joseph Addison. 279 



Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing. 
So when the sun's broad beam has tired the sight, 
All mild ascends the moon's more sober Hght, 
Serene in virgin majesty she shines, 
And unobserved, the glaring orb declines. 
Oh ! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray 
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day ; 
She who can love a sister's charms, or hear 
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear ; 
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools, 
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules ; 
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, 
Yet has her humor most when she obeys ; 
Let fops or fortune fly which way they will, 
Disdains all loss of tickets or Codille ;^ 
Spleen, vapors, or small-pox, above them all, 
And mistress of herself though china fall. 

Be this a woman's fame : with this unblest, 
Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest. 
This Phcebus promised (I forget the year) 
When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere ; 
Ascendant Phoebus watched that hour with care, 
Averted half your parents' simple prayer ; 
And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf 
That buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself. 
The generous God who wit and gold refines. 
And ripens spirits as he ripens mines, 
Kept dross for duchesses, the world shall know it, 
To you gave sense, good-humor, and a poet. 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 

SlGNOR NlCOLINI AND THE LlON. 
[From the S/>ectator.} 

There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of 
greater amusement to the town than Signor Nicolini's combat 
with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often 
exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility 

1 The " pool " in the game of ombre. 



28o From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. . . . But 
before I communicate my discoveries I must acquaint the 
reader that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as 
I was thinking on something else, I accidentally jostled against 
a monstrous animal that extremely startled me, and, upon my 
nearer survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant. The Hon, 
seeing me very much surprised, told me in a gentle voice that 
I might come by him if I pleased ; "for," says he, " I do not 
intend to hurt anybody." I thanked him very kindly and 
passed by him, and in a Httle time after saw him leap upon the 
stage and act his part with very great applause. It has been 
observed by several that the lion has changed his manner of 
acting twice or thrice since his first appearance, which will not 
seem strange when I acquaint the reader that the lion has 
been changed upon the audience three several times. 

The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who, being a fellow of a 
testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer 
himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done ; 
besides, it was observed of him that he grew more surly every 
time he came out of the lion ; and having dropt some words in 
ordinary conversation, as if he had not fought his best, and 
that he suffered himself to be thrown upon his back in the 
scuffle, and that he would wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what 
he pleased, out of his lion's skin, it was thought proper to 
discard him ; and it is verily believed to this day that had he 
been brought upon the stage another time he would certainly 
have done mischief. Besides, it was objected against the first 
lion that he reared himself so high upon his hinder paws, and 
walked in so erect a position, that he looked more like an oíd 
man than a lion. 

The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the 
playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceful man 
in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was too 
sheepish, for his part ; inasmuch that, after a short, modest 
walk upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of 
" Hydaspes " ^ without grappling with him and giving him an 
opportunity of showing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, 
indeed, that he once gave him a rip in his ñesh-colored 

1 In the opera of " Hydaspes," presented at the Haymarket in 1710, the 
hero, whose part was taken by Signor Nicolini, kills a lion in the amphi- 
theater. 



Samuel Johnson. 281 



doublet ; but this was only to make work for himself in his 
prívate character of a tailor. I must not omit that ¡t was this 
second lion who treated me with so much humanity behind 
the scenes. 

The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country 
gentleman who does it for his diversión, but desires his ñame 
may be concealed. He says very handsomely, in his own 
excuse, that he does not act for gain, that he indulges an 
innocent pleasure in it, and that it is better to pass away an 
evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking ; but at the 
same time he says, with a very agreeable raillery upon him- 
self, that if his ñame should be known the ill-natured world 
might cali him the ass ifi the lioii' s skin. The gentleman's 
temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and 
the choleric that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has 
drawn together greater audiences than have been known in 
the memory of man. 

I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a 
groundless report that has been raised to a gentleman's dis- 
advantage, of whom I must declare myself an admirer : 
namely, that Signor Nicolini and the lion have been seen 
sitting peaceably by one another and smoking a pipe together 
behind the scenes, by which their common enemies would 
insinúate that it is but a sham combat which they represent 
upon the stage ; but upon inquiry I find that if any such 
correspondence has passed between them it was not till the 
combat was over, when the lion was to be looked upon as 
dead, according to the received rules of the drama. Besides, 
this is what is practiced every day in Westminster Hall, where 
nothing is more usual than to see a couple of lawyers, who 
have been tearing each other to pieces in the court, embracing 
one another as soon as they are out of it. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
Detached Passages from Boswell's Life. 

We talked of the education of children, and I asked him 
what he thought was best to teach them first. Joh7ison: S\r, 
it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what 
leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, while you are 



282 Pro7)i Chaticer io Tennyson. 

considering which of two things you should teach your child 
first, another boy has learnt them both. 

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind 
legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to see it done 
at all. 

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage mar- 
ried immediately after his wife died. Johnson said it was a 
triumph of hope over experience. 

He would not allow Scotland to derive any credit from 
Lord Mansfield, for he was educated in England. "Much," 
said he, "may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught 
young." Johnson: An oíd tutor of a college said to one of 
his pupils, "Read over your compositions, and wherever you 
meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine strike 
it out." A gentleman who introduced his brother to Dr. 
Johnson was earnest to recommend him to the doctor's notice, 
which he did by saying : " When we have sat together some 
time you'll find my brother grow very entertaining. " 

"Sir," said Johnson, " I can wait." 

"Greek, sir," said he, " is like lace; every man gets as 
much of it as he can." 

Lord Lucan tells a very good story, that when the gale of 
Thrale's brewery was going forward, Johnson appeared bust- 
ling about with an inkhorn and pen in his button-hole, like an 
exciseman, and on being asked what he really considered to 
be the valué of the property which was to be disposed of, 
answered, "We are not here to sell a parce! of boilers and 
vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of 
avarice." 

Johnson: My dear friend, clear your mÍ7id of cant. You 
may talk as other people do ; you may say to a man, "Sir, I 
am your most humble servant." You are not his most humble 
servant. You may say, "These are bad times ; it is a melan- 
choly thing to be reserved to such times." You don' t mind 
the times. You tell a man, "I am sorry you had such bad 
weather the last day of your journey and were so much wet." 
You don't care sixpence whether he is wet or dry. You may 
talk in this manner ; it is a mode of talking in society, but 
don't think foolishly. 

A lively saying of Dr. Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who 
had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written 



Oliver Goldsmith. 283 



" Paradise Lost" should write such poor sonnets : " Milton, 
madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, 
but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." 

A gentleman having said that a congé d' elire has not, per- 
haps, the forcé of a command, but may be considered only as 
a strong recommendation, "Sir," replied Johnson, " ¡t is 
such a recommendation as if I should throw you out of a two 
pair of stairs vvindow, and recommend you to fall soft." 

Happening one day to mention Mr. Flaxman, the doctor 
replied, " Let me hear no more of him, sir ; that is the fellow 
who made the index to my Ramblers, and set down the ñame 
of Milton thus : 'Milton, Mr. John.' " 

Goldsmith said that he thought he could write a good fable, 
mentioned the simplicity which that kind of composition 
requires, and observed that, in most fables, the animáis intro- 
duced seldom talk in character. " For instance," said he, 
" the fable of the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their 
heads, and, envying them, petitioned Júpiter to be changed 
into birds. The skill," continued he, "consists in making 
them talk like little fishes." While he indulged himself in 
this fanciful reverle, he observed Johnson shaking his sides 
and laughing. Upon which he smartly proceeded, "Why, 
Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think ; for if you 
were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." 

He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visit- 
ing the wall of China. I caught it for the moment, and said I 
really believed I should go and see the wall of China, had I 
not children of whom it was my duty to take care. "Sir," 
said he, " by doing so, you would do what would be of im- 
portance in raising your children to eminence. There would 
be a luster reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. 
They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man 
who had gone to view the wall of China — I am serious, sir. ' ' 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The Village Pastor and Schoolmaster. 

[From " The Deserted Village."] 

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 
And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; 



284 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 

The village preacher's modest mansión rose. 

A man he was to all the country dear, 

And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 

Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 

Ñor e'er had changed, ñor wished to change, his place. 

Unskilful he to fawn or seek for power 

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ; 

Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, 

More bent to raise the wretched than to rise. 

His house was known to all the vagrant train — 

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; 

The long-remembered beggar was his guest, 

Whose beard, descending, svvept his aged breast. 

The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, 

Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ; 

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 

Sat by his fire and talked the night away ; 

Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, 

Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won. 

Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, 

And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 

Careless their merits or their faults to sean, 

His pity gave e re charity began. 

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride. 
And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side. 

At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 

His looks adorned the venerable place ; 

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway. 

And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. 

The service past, around the pious man, 

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 

E'en children foUowed with endearing wile 

And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile. 

His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed, 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed ; 

To them his heart, his love, his griefs, were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 

As some tall cliíf, that lifts its awful form, 



Edmund Burke. 285 



Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 

With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, 

There, ¡n his noisy mansión, skilled to rule, 

The village master taught his little school. 

A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 

I knew him well, and every truant knew. 

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 

The day's disasters ¡n his morning face ; 

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 

At all his jokes (for many a joke had he); 

Full well the busy whisper, circling round, 

Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned ; 

Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, 

The love he bore to learning was in fault. 

The village all declared how much he knew — 

'Twas certain he could write and cipher too ; 

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 

And e'en the story ran that he could gauge. 

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 

For, e'en though vanquished, he could argüe still, 

While words of learned length and thundering sound 

Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; 

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew 

That one small head could carry all he knew. 

EDMUND BURKE. 
The Decay of Loyalty. 

[From " Reflections on the Revolution in France."] 

It is sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of 
France,^ then the dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never 
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more 
delightful visión. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating 
and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in ; 
glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and 
joy. O, what a revolution ! and what a heart must I have to 

1 Marie Antoinette. 



286 From Chaiicer to Tennyson. 

contémplate without emotion that elevation and that fall. 
Little did I dream, when sha added titles of veneration to 
those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that sha should 
ever ba obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace 
concealed in that bosom ; Httle did I dream that I should have 
lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of 
gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I 
thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from the 
scabbards to avenga even a look that threatened her with 
insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, 
economists, and calculators has succeaded ; and the glory of 
Europa is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we 
behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud sub- 
mission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the 
heart which kept alive, even in servituda itself, the spirit of 
an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap 
defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic 
enterprise is gone ! It is gone, that sensibility of principie, 
that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which 
inspirad courage, whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled 
whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its 
evil by losing all its grossness. . . . On the scheme of 
this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold 
hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of 
solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws 
are to be supported only by their own terms, and by the con- 
cern which each individual may find in them from his own 
prívate speculations, or can spare to them from his own prívate 
interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every 
vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which 
engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On 
the principies of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions 
can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in per- 
sons ; so as to créate in us love, veneration, admiration, or 
attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affec- 
tions is incapable of fiUing their place. These public affec- 
tions, combinad with manners, are required sometimes as 
supplements, sometimes as corrections, always as aids, to law. 
The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for 
the construction of poems, is aqually trua as to states : Non 
satis est pulchra esse poemaia, dulcía simio. Thera ought to 



Tilomas Gray. 287 



be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed 
mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our 
country, our country ought to be lovely. 



THOMAS GRAY. 
The Graves of the Lowly. 

[From the " Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."] 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 

Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre. 

But Knowledge to their eyes her ampie page 
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll ; 

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear : 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country' s blood. 

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land. 
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes, 

Their lot forbade : ñor circumscrib'd alone 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd ; 

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne. 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride 
With incensé kindled at the Muse's flama. 



288 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray ; 

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 

WILLIAM COWPER. 
From Lines on the Receipt of his Mother's Picture. 

THAT those lips had language ! Life has passed 
With me but roughly since I heard thee last. 
Those lips are thine — thy own sweet smile I see, 
The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; 
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, 
"Grieve not, my child ; chase all thy fears away ! " 

My mother ! When I learnt that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun? 

1 heard the bell tolled on thy burial day ; 

I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away ; 

And, turning from my nursery window, drew 

A lóng, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 

Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, 

Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. 

What ardently I wished I long believed, 

And disappointed still, was still deceived ; 

By expectation every day beguiled, 

Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. 

Thus many a sad to-morrow carne and went, 

Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, 

I learnt at last submission to my lot ; 

But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. 

WiNTER EVENING. 
[From "TheTask."] 

Now stir the fire and cióse the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofá round. 
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn 
Throws up a steaming column, and the cups 



Williatn Cowper. 289 



That cheer but not inebríate wait on each, 
So let US welcome peaceful evening in. 

winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 

Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled, 

Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheek 

Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 

Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds, 

A leafless branch thy scepter, and thy throne 

A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, 

But urged by storms along its sHppery way ; 

1 love thee, all unlovely as thou seemest. 

And dreaded as thou art. Thou holdest the sun 
A prisoner in the yet undawning east, 
Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 
Down to the rosy west ; but kindly still 
Compensating his loss with added hours 
Of social converse and instructive ease, 
And gathering, at short notice, in one group 
The family dispersed, and fixing thought, 
Not less dispersed by dayhght and its cares. 
I crown thee king of intimate dehghts, 
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, 
And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours 
Of long uninterrupted evening know. 

Man's Inhumanity to Man. 

[From " The Task."] 

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, 

Some boundless contiguity of shade, 

Where rumor of oppression and deceit, 

Of unsuccessful or successful war 

Might never reach me more ! My ear is pained, 

My soul is sick with every day's report 

Of wrong or outrage with which earth is filled. 

There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, 

It does not feel for man ; the natural bond 

Of brotherhood is severed as the flax 

That falls asunder at the touch of fire. 



290 Fro77i Chaucer to Te7inyson. 

ROBERT BURNS. 
Tam O'Shanter. 

When chapman billies^ leave the street, 
And drouthy^ neebors neebors meet, 
As market-days are wearing late 
An' folk begin to tak the gate ;' 
While we sit bousing at the nappy,* 
An' getting fou * and unco " happy, 
We think na en the lang Scots miles, 
The mosses,' waters, slaps,^ and styles, 
That lie between us and our hame, 
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm, 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

This truth fand honest Tam O'Shanter, 
As he frae Ayr ae* night did canter, 
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses, 
For honest men and bonnie lasses.) 

O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise 
As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice ! 
She tauld thee weel thou wast a skellum,'" 
A blethering," blustering, drunken blellum \^^ 
That frae November till October, 
Ae market-day thou wasna sober ; 
That ilka melder,^^ wi' the miller, 
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ; 
That every naig was ca'd" a shoe on, 
The smith and thee gat roaring fou on ; 
That at the Lord's house, aven on Sunday, 
Thou drank wi' Kirten Jean till Monday. 
She prophesy'd that, late or soon, 
Thou would be found deep drowned in Doon, 
Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk, 
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet,^^ 
To think how monie counsels sweet, 

1 Peddier fellows. 2 Thirsty. 3 Road home. 4 Ale. 5 Full. 6 Uncom- 
monly. ' Swamps. 8 Gaps in a hedge. o One. 10 Good-for-nothing. 
11 Babbling. 12 Gossip. i3 Every time corn was sent to the mili. 
14 Driven. 15 Maíces me weep. 



Robert B7irns. 291 



How monie lengthened, sage advices 
The husband frae the wife despises ! 

Nae man can tether time or tide ; 
The hour approaches Tam maun' ride ; 
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, 
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in ; 
And sic^ a night he taks the road in, 
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. 

The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; 
The rattling showers rose on the blast ; 
The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed ; 
Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellowed : 
That night, a child might understand, 
The Deil had business on his hand. 

(Mounted on his gray mare Maggie, Tam pursues his home- 
ward way in safety till, reaching Kirk-Alloway, he sees the 
Windows in a blaze, and, looking in, beholds a dance of 
witches, with Oíd Nick playing the fiddle. Most of the witches 
are anything but inviting, but there is one winsome wench, 
called Nannie, who dances in a " cutty-sark, " or short smock.) 

But here my muse her wing maun cower ; 
Sic flights are far beyond her power ; 
To sing how Nannie lap and flang ^ 
(A souple jade she was, and strang), 
And how Tam stood like ane bewitched. 
And thought his very e'en enriched. 
Even Satán glowered and fidged fu faín,* 
And hotch'd '" and blew wi' might and main ; 
Till first ae caper, syne" anither, 
Tam tinf his reason a' theither. 
And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark ! " 
And in an instant all was dark : 
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, 
When out the hellish legión sallied. 

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke,^ 
When plundering herds assail their byke ;' 
As open pussie's mortal foes, 
1 Must. 2 Such, 3 Leaped and flung. ■* Stared and fidgeted with 

«agerness. 6 Hítched about. 6 Then. ' Lost. 8 Fuss. » Hive. 



292 From Chaiicer to Tenyiyso7i. 

When, pop ! she starts before their nose ; 

As eager runs the market-crowd 

When " Catch the thief ! " resounds aloud. 

So Maggie runs, the witches follow 

W¡' monie an eldritch skreech and hollow. 

Ah, Tam ! ah, Tam ! thou'll get thy fairin' ! ^ 
In hell they'U roast thee Hke a herrín' ! 
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' : 
Kate soon will be a woefu' woman. 
Now do thy speedy utmost Meg, 
And win the key-stane of the brig \"' 
There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
A running stream they daré na cross, 
But ere the key-stane she could make, 
The fient^ a tale she had to shake, 
For Nannie, far before the rest, 
Hard upon noble Maggie pressed, 
And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle ;* 
But little wist she Maggie 's mettle— 
Ae spring brought aff her master hale,* 
But left behind her ain gray tail ; 
The carlin» claught' her by the rump, 
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

The Pre-existence of the Soul. 

[From " Ode 011 the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early- 
Childhood."] 

OuR birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises vvith us, our-life's star, 
Hath had elsevvhere its setting. 

And cometh from afar ; 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home. 

Heaven lies about us in our infancy : 
Shades of the prison-house begin to cióse 
iDeserts. «Bridge. sDevil. 4Aim. swhole. « Hag. 7 CaughU 



Williaví Wordsworth. 2g^ 

Upon the growing boy ; 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy. 
The youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 

And by the visión splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 
At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 

O joy ! that in our embers 

Is something that doth live, 
That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! 
The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benedictions : not, indeed, 
For that which is most worthy to be blest ; 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast — 

Not for these I raise 

The song of thanks and praise ; 

But for those obstínate questionings 

Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings ; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised : 

But for those first affections, 

Those shadowy recoUections, 

Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 

Uphold US, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence : truths that wake 

To perish never ; 
Which neither listnessness, ñor mad endeavor, 
Ñor man ñor boy, 



294 Froin Chance?- io Tainyson. 

Ñor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy. 

Henee, in a season of calm weather, 
Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither ; 
Can in a moment travel thither. 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolHng evermore. 

LUCY. 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 
Beside the springs of Dove, 

A maid whom there were none to praise, 
And very few to love. 

A violet by a mossy stone 

Half hidden from the eye : 
Fair as a star, when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be ; 
Biit she is in her grave, and, oh, 

The difference to me ! 

The Solitary Reaper. 

Behold her, single in the field. 

Yon solitary Highland lass ! 
Reaping and singing by herself ; 

Stop here, or gently pass ! 
Alone she cuts and binds the grain, 
And sings a melancholy straín ; 
O listen ! for the vale profound 
Is overflowing with the sound. 

No nightingale did ever chant 
More welcome notes to weary bands 

Of travelers in some shady haunt, 
Among Arabian sands. 

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 



Samtiel Taylor Coleridge. 295 

In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
Breaking the silence of the seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides. 

Will no one tell me what she sings ? 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
For oíd, unhappy, far-off things, 

And battles long ago : 
Or is it some more humble lay, 
FamiHar matter of to-day ? 
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 
That has been, and may be again ? 

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang 

As if her song could have no ending, 
I saw her singing at her work, 

And o'er the sickle bending ; 
I listened, motionless and still, 
And, as I mounted up the hill, . 
The music in my heart I bore, 
Long after it was heard no more. 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
The Song of the Spirits. 

[From " The Ancient Mariner."] 
SoMETiMES, a-dropping from the sky, 

I heard the skylark sing ; 
Sometimes all little birds that are, 

How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
With their sweet jargoning ! 

And now 'twas like all instruments, 

And now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is an angel's song 

That makes the heavens be mute. 

It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 

A pleasant noise till noon, 
A noise like of a hidden brook 

In the leafy month of June, 
That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singeth a quiet tune. 



296 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 



The Love of All Creatures. 

[From thesame.] 

O WEDDiNG guest, this soul hath been 
Alone on a wide, wide sea : 

So lonely 'tvvas that God himself 
Scarce seeméd there to be. 

O sweeter than the marriage feast, 

'Tis sweeter far to me, 
To vvalk together to the kirk 

With a goodly company. 

To walk together to the kirk, 

And all together pray, 
While each to his great Father bends. 
Oíd men and babes and lovíng friends, 

And youths and maidens gay. 

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
To thee, thou vvedding guest ; 

He prayeth well who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 

Por the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all. 

ESTRANGEMENT OF pRIENDS. 

[From " Christabel."] 

Alas ! they had been friends in youth : 
But whispering tongues can poison truth, 
And constancy lives in realms above, 

And life is thorny and youth is vain. 
And to be wroth with one we love 

Doth work like madness in the brain. 
And thus it fared, as I divine, 
With Roland and Sir Leoline. 
Each spake words of high disdain 

And insult to his heart's best brother ; 
They parted — ne'er to meet again ! 



Walter Scott. 297 



But never either found another 
To free the hoUow heart from paining. 
They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
Like cüffs that had been rent asunder : 

A dreary sea now flows between, 
But neither heat, ñor frost ñor thunder 

Can wholly do away, I ween, 

The marks of that which once has been. 

WALTER SCOTT. 
Native Land. 
[From " The Lay of the Last Minstrel."] 
Breathes there the man with soul so dead 
Wh(j never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ? 
Whose heart hath ne'er within hini burned, 
As home his footsteps he hath turned, 

From wandering on a foreign strand ? 
If such there breathe, go mark him well ; 
For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
High though his titles, proud his ñame, 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ; 
Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 
The wretch concentered all in self, 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 

O Caledonia ! stern and wild, 

Meet nurse for a poetic child ! 

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 

Land of the mountain and the flood, 

Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 

Can e'er untie the filial band 

That knits me to thy rugged strand ? 

Still, as I view each well-known scene, 

Think what is now, and what hath been, 

Seems as, to me, of all bereft 

Solé friends thy woods and streams are left : 



298 From Chancea- io Tennyson. 

And thus I love them better still 
Even in extremity of ill. 
By Yarrow's stream still let me stray, 
Though none should guide my feeble way ; 
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break, 
Although it chill my withered cheek ; 
Still lay my head by Teviot's stone, 
Though there, forgotten and alone, 
The bard may draw his parting groan. 

Proud Maisie. 
Proud Maisie is in the wood 

Walking so early ; 
Sweet Robin sits on the bush 

Singing so rarely. , 

"Tell me, thou bonny bird, 

When shall I marry me ? " 
— "When six braw' gentlemen 

Kirkward shall carry ye." 

"Who makes the bridal bed, 

Birdie, say truly ?" 
"The gray-headed sexton 

That delves the grave duly. 

"The glow-worm o'er grave and stone 

Shall light thee steady ; 
The owl from the steeple sing 

Welcome, proud lady." 

PiBROCH OF DONUIL DhU. 

PiBROCH of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, 
Wake thy wild voice anew, summon Clan-Conuil. 
Come away, come away, hark to the summons ! 
Come in your war array, gentles and commons. 

Come from deep glen and from mountain so rocky, 
The war-pipe and pennon are at Inverlochy. 
Come every hill-plaid and true heart that wears one, 
Come every steel blade and strong hand that bears one. 
Leave untended the herd, the flock without shelter ; 
1 Brave, fine. 



Percy Bysshe Shelley. 299 

Leave the corpse uninterred, the bride at the altar ; 
Leave the deer, leave the steer, leave nets and barges : 
Come with your fighting gear, broadswords, and targes. 

Come as the winds come when forests are rendad ; 
Come as the waves come when navies are stranded ; 
Faster come, faster come ; faster and faster, 
Chief, vassal, page and groom, tenant and master. 

Fast they come, fast they come ; see how they gather ! 
Wide waves the eagle plume blended with heather. 
Cast your plaids, draw your blades forward each man set [ 
Pibroch Oí Donuil Dhu, knell for the onset ! 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

Lines to an Indian Air. 

I ARiSE from dreams of thee 

In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low 

And the stars are shining bright. 
I arise from dreams of thee. 

And a spirit in my feet 
Has led me — who knows how? — 

To thy chamber-window, sweet. 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream ; 

The champak odors fail 

Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 

The nightingale's complaint, 
It dies upon her heart. 

As I must die on thine, 

belovéd as thou art ! 

O lift me from the grass ! 

1 die, I faint, I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 

On my lips and eyelids palé. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 

My heart beats loud and fast : 
O press it cióse to thine again, 

Where it will break at last. 



300 From Chaiicer to Teyíyiyson. 

A Lament. 
O WORLD ! O life ! O time ! 
On vvhose last steps I climb, 

Trembling at that where I had stood before, 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 

No more — O never more ! 

Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight ; 

Fresh spring and summer and winter hoar 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 

No more — O never more ! 

The Poet's Dream. 

[From " Piometheus Unbound."] 

On a poet's lips I slept 
Dreaming like a love-adept 
In the sound his breathing kept. 
Ñor seeks ñor finds he mortal blisses, 
But feeds on the aerial kisses 
Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 
He will watch from dawn to glooni 
The lake-reflected sun illume 
The yellow bees in the ivy bloom, 
Ñor heed ñor sea what things they be ; 
But from these créate he can 
Forms more real than living man, 
Nurslings of immortality. 

GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

TWILIGHT. 
[From " Donjuán."] 
SwEET hour of twilight ! — in the solitude 

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, 

Rooted where once the Adrián wave flowed o'er, 
To where the last Caesarian fortress stood, 

Evergreen forest ! which Boccaccio's lore 
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, 
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee ! 



George Gordon Byron. 301 

The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, 

Making their summer Uves one ceaseless song, 

Were the solé echoes, save my steed's and mine, 
And vesper bells that rose the boughs along ; 

The specter huntsman of Onesti's Une, 

His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng 

Which learned from this example not to fly 

From a true lover — shadovv'd my mind's eye. 

O Hesperus ! thou bringest all good things — 
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, 

To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, 
The welcome stall to the o'erlabored steer ; 

Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone dings, 
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear, 

Are gathered round us by thy look of rest ; 

Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. 

Soft hour ! which wakes the wish and melts the heart 
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day 

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart ; 
Or filis with love the pilgrim on his vvay 

As the far bell of vesper makes him start, 
Seeming to vveep the dying day's decay ; 

Is this a fancy which our reason scorns ? 

Ah ! surely nothing dies but something mourns ! 

The Ball at Brussels on the Night before Waterloo. 

[From "ChildeHarold."] 

There was a sound of revelry by night. 

And Belgium's capital had gathered then 

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright 

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men : 

A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 

Music aróse with its voluptuous swell, 

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again. 

And all went merry as a marriage-bell ; 

But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell ! 

Did ye not hear it ? No ; 'twas but the wind, 
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street. 



302 From Chaucer to Tenyiyson. 

On with the dance ! let joy be unconfined ! 

No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet 

To chase the glovving hours with flying feet — 

But hark ! that heavy sound breaks in once more, 

As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! 

Arm ! arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening roar ! 

Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 

And gathering tears, and trembUngs of distress, 

And cheeks all palé which but an hour ago 

Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness ; 

And there were sudden partings, such as press 

The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 

Which ne'er might be repeated : who could guess 

If evermore should meet those mutual eyes, 

Since upen night so sweet such awful morn could rise ? 

And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car 
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed. 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war ; 
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar ; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star ; 
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering, with white lips, "The foe ! they come! they 
come ! " 

And wild and high the "Cameron's gathering" rose, 

The war note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills 

Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes : 

How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, 

Savage and shrill ! But with the breath which filis 

Their mountain pipe, so fiU the mountaineers 

With the fierce native daring which instils 

The stirring memory of a thousand years ; 

And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears. 

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves. 
Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, 



John Keats. 303 



Over the unreturning brave — alas ! 

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass 

Whicli now beneath them, but above shall grow, 

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 

Of living valor rolling on the foe, 

And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low. 

JOHN KEATS. 
Ode on a Crecían Urn. 

Thou still unravished bride of quietness ! 

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme ; 
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 

Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 

What men or gods are these ? What maidens loath ? 
What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 

What pipes and timbréis ? What wild ecstasy ? 

Heard melodies are sweet ; but those unheard 

Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

Thy song, ñor ever can those trees be bare ; 
Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss, 
Though winning near the goal — yet do not grieve : 
She cannot fade though thou hast not thy bliss, 

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 

Your leaves, ñor ever bid the spring adieu ; 
And happy melodist, unweariéd, 

Forever piping songs forever new ; 
More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 

Forever warm and still to be enjoyed, 
Forever panting and forever young ; 
AU breathing human passion far above, 

That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyed, 
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 



304 Froni Chaucer to Tennyson. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
What little town by river or sea-shore, 

Or mountain built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of ¡ts folk this pious morn ? 
Ah ! little town, thy streets forever more 

Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desoíate can e'er return. 

O Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede 

Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 

When oíd age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
" Beauty is truth, truth beauty " — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 

Madeline. 

[From " The Eve of St. Agnes."] 

Out went the taper as she hurried in ; 

Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died ; 

She closed the door, she panted, all akin 

To spirits of the air and visions wide ; 

No uttered syllable, or, woe betide ! 

But to her heart her heart was voluble, 

Paining with eloquence her balmy side ; 

As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 

Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled in her dell. 

A casement high and triple-arched there was, 

All garlanded with carven imageries 

Of fruits and flowers and bunches of knot-grass, 

And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 

Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes 

As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings ; 

And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 



Charles Dickens. 305 



And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 

A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings. 

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 

As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 

Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together pressed, 

And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 

And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 

She seemed a splendid ángel, newly dressed, 

Save wings, for heaven : Porphyro grew faint : 

She knelt, so puré a thing, so free from mortal taint. 

CHARLES DICKENS. 

BoB Sawyer's Bachelor Party. 

[From " Pickwick Papers."] 

After supper another jug of punch was put on the table, 
together with a paper of cigars and a couple of bottles of 
spirits. Then there was an awful pause ; and this awful 
pause was occasioned by a very common occurrence in this 
sort of places, but a very embarrassing one, notwithstanding. 

The fact is that the girl was washing the glasses. The 
establishment boasted four ; we do not record this circum- 
stance as at all derogatory to Mrs. Raddle, for there was 
never a lodging-house yet that was not short of glasses. The 
landlady's glasses were little thin blown-glass tumblers, and 
those which had been borrowed from the public-house were 
great, dropsical, bloated articles, each supported on a huge 
gouty leg. This would have been in itself sufficient to have 
possessed the company with the real state of affairs ; but the 
young woman of all work had prevented the possibility of any 
misconception arising in the mind of any gentleman upon the 
subject, by forcibly dragging every man's glass away long 
before he had finished his beer, and audibly stating, despite 
the winks and interruptions of Mr. Bob Sawyer, that it was to 
be conveyed down-stairs and washed forthwith. . . . 

The sight of the tumblers restored Bob Sawyer to a degree 
of equanimity which he had not possessed since his interview 
with his landlady. His face brightened up, and he began to 
feel quite convivial. 



3o6 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

"Now, Betsy," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, vvith great suavity, 
and dispersing, at the same time, the tumultuous little mob of 
glasses that the girl had collected in the center of the table ; 
" Now, Betsy, the warm water ; be brisk, there's a good girl." 

" You can't ha ve no warm water," repHed Betsy. 

" No warm water ! " exclaimed Mr. Bob Sawyer. 

"No," said the girl, with a shake of the head which ex- 
pressed a more decided negativa than the most copious lan- 
guage could have conveyed. " Missis Raddle said you wasn't 
to have none." 

The surprise depicted on the countenances of his guests 
imparted new courage to the host. 

" Bring up the warm water instantly — instantly ! " said Mr. 
Bob Sawyer, with desperate sternness. 

" No ; I can't," replied the girl. " Missis Raddle raked out 
the kitchen fire afore she went to bed, and locked up the 
kettle." 

"O, never mind, never mind. Pray don't disturb yourself 
about such a trifle," said Mr. Pickwick, observing the conflict 
of Bob Sawyer's passions, as depicted on his countenance, 
"cold water will do very well." 

" O, admirably," said Mr. Benjamín Alien. 

" My landlady is subject to slight attacks of mental de- 
rangement," remarked Bob Sawyer, with a ghastly smile ; " I 
fear I must give her warning." 

" No, don't," said Ben Alien. 

"I fear I must," said Bob, with heroic firmness. " I'll pay 
her what I owe her and give her warning to-morrow morning. ' ' 

Poor fellow ! How devoutly he wished he could ! . . . It 
was at the end of the chorus to the first verse that Mr. Pick- 
wick held up his hand in a listening attitude, and said, as soon 
as silence was restored, " Hush ! I beg your pardon. I 
thought I heard somebody calling from up-stairs." 

A profound silence immediately ensued, and Mr. Bob Saw- 
yer was observed to turn palé. 

"I think I hear it now," said Mr. Pickwick. "Have the 
goodness to open the door." 

The door was no sooner opened than all doubt on the sub- 
ject was removed. 

"Mr. Sawyer — Mr. Sawyer," screamed a voice from the 
two-pair landing. 



Charles Dickens. 307 



"It's my landlady," said Bob Sawyer, looking round him 
with great dismay. "Yes, Mrs. Raddle." 

"What do you mean by this, Mr. Sawyer?" replied the 
voice, with great shrillness and rapidity of utterance. " Ain't 
it enough to be swindled out of one's rent, and money lent 
out of pocket besides, and abused and insulted by your 
friends that dares to cali themselves men, without having the 
house turned out of window, and noise enough made to bring 
the fire-engines here at two o'clock in the morning? Turn 
them wretches away." 

" You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," said the voice of 
Mr. Raddle, which appeared to proceed from beneath some 
-distant bed-clothes. 

"Ashamed of themselves!" said Mrs. Raddle. "Why 
•don't you go down and knock 'em every one down-stairs? 
You would, if you was a man." 

"I should if I was a dozen men, my dear," replied Mr. 
Raddle, pacifically ; "but they've rather the advantage of me 
in numbers, my dear." 

"Ugh, you coward ! " replied Mrs. Raddle, with supreme 
contempt. ''Do you mean to turn them wretches out or not, 
Mr. Sawyer? " 

"They're going, Mrs. Raddle, they're going," said the 
miserable Bob. "I'm afraid you'd better go," said Mr. Bob 
Sawyer to his friends. " I thought you were making too much 
noise." 

" It's a very unfortunate thing," said the prim man. "Just 
as we were getting so comfortable, too." The fact was that 
the prim man was just beginning to have a dawning recollec- 
tion of the story he had forgotten. 

"It's hardly to be borne," said the prim man, looking 
round; "hardly to be borne, is it?" 

"Not to be endured," replied Jack Hookins ; "let's have 
the other verse, Bob ; come, here goes." 

"No, no, Jack, don't," interposed Bob Sawyer; "it's a 
■capital song, but I am afraid we had better not have the 
other verse. They are very violent people, the people of the 
Tiouse." 

"Shall I step up-stairs and pitch into the landlord?" in- 
quired Hopkins, "or keep on ringing the bell, or go and 
groan on the staircase? You may command me, Bob." 



3o8 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

"I am very much indebted to you for your friendship and 
good-nature, Hopkins," said the wretched Mr. Bob Sawyer, 
"but I am of opinión that the best plan to avoid any farther 
dispute is for us to break up at once." 

" Now, Mr. Sawyer," screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. 
Raddle, "are them brutes going? " 

"They're only looking for their hats, Mrs. Raddle," said 
Bob; "they are going directly." 

"Going!" said Mrs. Raddle, thrusting her night-cap over 
the bannisters just as Mr. Pickwick, followed by Mr. Tupman, 
emerged from the sitting-room. "Going! What did they 
ever come for?" 

"My dear ma'am," remonstrated Mr. Pickwick, looking up. 

" Get along with you, you oíd wretch I " replied Mrs. 
Raddle, hastily withdrawing her night-cap. "Oíd enough to 
be his grandfather, you villain 1 You're worse than any of 
'em." 

Mr. Pickwick found it in vain to protest his innocence, so 
hurried downstairs into the street, whither he was closely fol- 
lowed by Mr. Tupman, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
Becky Goes to Court and Diñes at Gaunt House. 

[From " Vanity Fair."] 

The particulars of Becky's costume were in the newspapers 
— feathers, lappets, superb diamonds, and all the rest. Lady 
Crackenbury read the paragraph in bitterness of spirit, and 
discoursed to her followers about the airs which that woman 
was giving herself. Mrs. Bute Crawley and her young ladies 
in the country had a copy of the Mornmg Posí from town, 
and gave a vent to their honest indignation. " If you had 
been sandy-haired, green-eyed, and a French rope-dancer's 
daughter," Mrs. Bute said to her eldest girl (who, on the 
contrary, was a very swarthy, short, and snub-nosed young 
lady), "you might have had superb diamonds, forsooth, and 
have been presented at court by your cousin, the Lady Jane. 
But you're only a gentlewoman. my poor dear child. You 
have only some of the best blood in England in your veins, 
and good principies and piety for your portion. I myself, the 



William Makepeace Thackeray. 309 

wife of a baronet's younger brother, too, never thought of 
such a thing as going to court — ñor would other people ¡f 
good Queen Charlotte had been alive." In this way the 
worthy rectoress consoled herself ; and lier daughters sighed, 
and sat over the Peerage all night. . , . 

When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that 
mornuig Lord Steyne (who took his chocolate in prívate, and 
seldom disturbed the females of his household, or saw them 
except upon public days, or when they crossed each other in 
the hall, or when from his pit-box at the opera he surveyed 
them in their box in the grand tier) — his lordship, we say, 
appeared among the ladies and the children, who were 
assembled over the tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued 
apropos of Rebecca. 

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list for 
your dinner on Friday ; and I want you, if you please, to 
write a card for Colonel and Mrs. Crawley." 

" Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said, in a flutter. 
" Lady Gaunt writes them." 

"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said, a tall 
and stately lady, who looked up for an instant and then down 
again after she had spoken. It was not good to meet Lord 
Steyne's eyes for those who had offended him. 

" Send the children out of the room. Go ! " said he, puUing 
at the bell-rope. The urchins, always frightened before him, 
retired; their mother would have foUowed too. "Not you," 
he said. "You stop." 

" My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more, will you have 
the goodness to go to the desk and write that card for your 
dinner on Friday?" 

" My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt said ; " I 
will go home." 

"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the 
bailiífs at Bareacres very pleasant company ; and I shall be 
freed from lending money to your relations, and from your 
own damned tragedy airs. Who are you, to give orders here ? 
You have no money. You've got no brains. You were here 
to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired of 
you ; and George's wife is the only person in the family who 
doesn't wish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if 
vou were." 



3IO From Chaticer to Tennyson. 



" I wish I were," her ladyship answered, with tears and rage 
in her eyes. 

" You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue ; while 
my wife, who is an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, 
and never did wrong in her life, has no objection to meet my 
young friend, Mrs. Crawley. My Lady Steyne knows that 
appearances are sometimes against the best of women ; that 
lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, 
madam, shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady 
Bareacres, your mamma ? " 

" You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow," 
Lady Gaunt said. To see his wife and daughter suffering 
always put his lordship into a good humor. 

"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and 
never lay my hand upon a woman, save in the way of kind- 
ness. I only wish to correct little faults in your character. 
You women are too proud, and sadly lack humility, as Father 
Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne if he were here. 
You mustn't give yourselves airs : you must be meek and 
humble, my blessings. For all Lady Steyne knows, this 
calumniated, simple, good-humored Mrs. Crawley is quite 
innocent — even more innocent than herself. Her husband's 
character is not good, but it is as good as Bareacres's, who has 
played a little and not payed a great deal, who cheated you 
out of the only legacy you ever liad, and left you a pauper on 
my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well born ; but sha 
is not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la 
Jones." 

"•The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady 
George cried out — 

"You purchased a contingent reversión with it," the mar- 
quis said, darkly. " If Gaunt dies, your husband may come 
to his honors ; your little boys may inherit them, and who 
knows what besides? In the meanwhile, ladies, be as proud 
and virtuous as you like abroad, but don't give me any airs. 
As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I sha'n't demean myself or 
that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable lady, by even 
hinting that it even requires a defense. You will be pleased to 
receive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all 
persons whom I present in this house. This house?" He 
broke out with a laugh. " Who is the master of it, and what 



George Eliot. 311 



is it ? This temple of virtue belongs to me. And if I invite all 

Newgate or all Bedlam here, by , they shall be welcome." 

After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord 
Steyne treated his " Hareem " whenever symptoms of insubor- 
dination appeared in his household, the crestfallen women had 
nothing for it but to obey. Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation 
which his lordship required, and she and her mother-in-law 
drove in person, and with bitter and humiliated hearts, to 
leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of which 
caused that innocent woman so much pleasure. 



GEORGE ELIOT. 

Passages from Adam Bede. 

It was a wood of beeches and limes, with here and there a 
light, silver-stemmed birch — just the sort of wood most 
haunted by the nymphs ; you see their white sun-lit limbs 
gleaming athwart the boughs or peeping from behind the 
smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime ; you hear their soft 
liquid laughter — but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious 
eye they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you 
believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps 
they metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that 
scampers away and mocks you from the topmost bough. Not 
a grove with measured grass or roUed gravel for you to tread 
upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped earthy paths, edged 
with faint dashes of delicate moss — paths which look as if 
they were made by the free will of the trees and underwood, 
moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen of the white- 
footed nymphs. 

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make 
fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to 
the sheepish ; but there is one order of beauty which seems 
made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent 
mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, 
or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises 
with their soft bilis, or bables just beginning to toddle and to 
engage in conscious mischief — a beauty with which you can 
never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to 



312 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you. . . . 
It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like 
a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that 
her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long 
lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under 
her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark 
deUcate rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-hke 
ears ; it is of little use for me to say how lovely was the 
contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her 
low plum-colored stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making 
apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by 
duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines, or how her 
brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes lost all that 
clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of 
her foot and ankle — of little use unless you have seen a 
woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for 
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely 
woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracting 
kitten-Iike maiden. I might mention all the divine charms of 
a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly 
forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting 
lark, or in wandering through the still lañes when the fresh- 
opened blossoms fill them with a sacred, silent beauty like 
that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive 
catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a 
bright spring day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty ; it was 
the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gamboling, 
circumventing you by a false air of innocence — the innocence 
of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined 
for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeple- 
chase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the 
middle of a bog. 

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, 
that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and 
muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains ; 
blends yearning and repulsión, and ties us by our heart-strings 
to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a 
voice with the very cadenee of our own uttering the thoughts 
we despise ; we see eyes — ah ! so like our mother's — averted 
from US in cold alienation ; and our last darling child startles us 



Tilomas Carlyle. 313 



with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in 
bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our 
best heritage— the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to 
harmony, the unconscious skill of the modehng hand — galls 
US, and puts us to shame by his daily errors. The long-lost 
mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own 
wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious 
humors and irrational persistence. 

It was to Adam the time that a man can least forget in after 
life — the time when he believes that the first woman he has 
ever loved betrays by a slight something — a word, a tone, a 
glance, the quivering of a Hp or an eyelid— that she is at least 
beginning to love him in return. ... So unless our early 
gladness vanishes utterly from our memory, we can never 
recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother' s 
bosom or rodé on our father's back in childhood ; doubtless 
that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunHght of 
long-past mornings is wrought up into the soft mellowness of 
the apricot ; but it is gone forever from our imagination as we 
can only believe in the joy of childhood. But the first glad 
moment in our first love is a visión which returns to us to the 
last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as 
the recurrent sensation of a sweet odor breathed in a far-off 
hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite 
touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy, and 
adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 

MlDNIGHT IN THE ClTV. 
[From " Sartor Resartus."] 

''Ach, mein Lieber!" said he once, at midnight, when he 
had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, " it 
is a true subUmity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, 
struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, 
some fathoms into the ancient reign of night, what thinks 
Boótes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith 
in their leash of sidereal fire ? That stifled hum of Midnight, 
when Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot wheeis of 



314 From Chazicer to Tennyson. 

Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are 
bearing her to Halls roofed-in and lighted to the due pitch for 
her ; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like 
night-birds, are abroad : that hum, I say, like the stertorous, 
unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh, 
under that hideous coverlet of vapors and putrefactions and 
unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering 
and hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men are 
dying there, men are being born : men are praying — on the 
other side of a brick partition men are cursing ; and around 
them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still 
lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask 
curtains ; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers 
hunger-stricken into its lair of straw : in obscure cellars, 
Roiige-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard, 
hungry Villains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting and 
playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. 
The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready ; and 
she, full of hope and fear, glides down to fly with him over 
the borders : the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his pick- 
locks and crowbars, or lurks in vvait till the watchmen first 
snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and 
dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling 
hearts ; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats 
tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the 
darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern 
last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow : 
comes no hammering from the Rabenstein? — their gallows 
must even now be o' building. Upward of five hundred 
thousand two-legged animáis without feathers lie round us in 
horizontal positions ; their heads all in night-caps and full of 
the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and 
swaggers in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, with 
streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose 
cracked lips only her tears now moisten. — All these heaped 
and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and 
masonry between them ; — crammed in, like salted fish in their 
barrel ; — or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of 
tamed Vipers, each struggling to get its head above the other : 
such work goes on under that smoke-counterpane ! — But I, 
mein Werther, sit above it all : I am alone with the Stars." 



Thomas Carlyle. S^S 



Ghosts. 

[From the same.] 
Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual 
authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed all his Ufe to 
see one ; but could not, though he went to Cock Lañe, and 
thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish 
Doctor ! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with 
the body's, look around him into that fuU tide of human Life 
he so loved ; did he never so much as look into himself ? 
The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as 
heart could wish ; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travel- 
ing the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the 
illusion of Time ; compress the threescore years into three 
minutes ; what else was he, what else are we ? Are we not 
Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance ; and 
that fade away again into air, and Invisibility ? This is no 
metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of 
Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; round us, as 
round the veriest specter, is Eternity ; and to Eternity minutes 
are as years and seons. Come there not tones of Love and 
Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified 
souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our 
discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and 
glide bodeful and feeble and fearful ; or uproar {polfern), and 
revel in our mad Dance of the Dead— till the scent of the 
morning-air summons us to our still Home ; and dreamy 
Night becomes awake and Day ? Where now is Alexander of 
Macedón : does the steel Host that yelled in fierce battle- 
shouts at Issus and Arbela remain behind him ; or have they 
all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napo- 
león too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns ! 
Was it all other than the veriest Specter-hunt ; which has now, 
with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted 
away !— Ghosts ! There are nigh a thousand million walking 
the Earth openly at noontide ; some half-hundred have van- 
ished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy 
watch ticks once. . . . 

Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of 
Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious Mankind thunder and 
flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the 



3i6 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste stormfully across 
the astonished Earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. 
Earth's mountains are leveled, and her seas filled up, in our 
passage : can the Earth, which is but dead and a visión, resist 
Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest 
adamant some footprint of us is stamped in ; the last Rear of 
the host will read traces of the earHest Van. But whence ?— O 
Heaven, whither ? Sense knows not ; Faith knows not ; only 
that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 

" We are such stuff 
As Dreams are made of, and our Httle Life 
Is rounded with a sleep ! " 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 
The Days That Are No More. 

[From "ThePrincess."] 
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy autumn fields. 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 

The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds 

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

Dear as remembered kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O death in life, the days that are no more. 

The Passing of Arthur. 

[From " Morte D'Arthur."] 

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : 
"The oíd order changeth, yielding place to new. 



Al/red Termyson. 317 

And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

Comfort thyself : what comfort is in me ? 

I have lived my life, and that which I have done 

May he within himself make puré ! but thou, 

If thou shouldst never see my face again, 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 

Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats 

That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 

Both for themselves and those who cali them friend ? 

For so the whole round earth is every way 

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

But now farewell : I am going a long way 

With these thou seest — if indeed I go — 

( For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 

To the island-valley of Avilion ; 

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. 

Ñor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies 

Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns, 

And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea, 

Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." 

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail 
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan 
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, 
Ruffles her puré cold plume, and takes the flood 
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere 
Revolving many memories, till the huU 
Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn, 
And on the mere the wailing died away. 

BUGLE SONG. 

[From " The Princess."] 

The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits oíd in story : 
The long light shakes across the lakes 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 



3i8 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, 

And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let US hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river : 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 

Peace or War ? 

[From "Maud."] 

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, 
When the poor are hoveled and hustled together, each sex, 
like swine, 

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie ; 
Peace ¡n her vineyard — yes ! — but a company forges the wine. 

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the rufiian's head, 
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, 

While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, 
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 

And Sleep must lie down armed, for the villainous center-bits 
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, 

While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits 
To pestle a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights. 

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fea, 
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones, 

Is it peace or war? better, war ! loud war by land and by sea, 
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones. 

Stanzas from "In Memoriam." 

I ENVY not in any moods 

The captive void of noble rage, 

The linnet born within the cage, 
That never knew the summer woods ; 



Al/red Tennyson. 319 

I envy not the beast that takes 

His license in the fields of time, 

Unfettered by the sense of crime, 
To whom a conscience never wakes ; 

Ñor, what may count itself as blest, 
The heart that never pUghted troth, 
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth ; 

Ñor any want-begotten rest. 

I hold it true, whate'er befall ; 

I feel it when I sorrow most ; 

'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 

SONG FROM "MAUD." 

Come into the garden, Maud, 

For the black bat, night, has flown ; 
Come into the garden, Maud, 

I am here at the gate alone ; 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad. 

And the musk of the roses blown. 

For a breeze of morning moves, 

And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves 

On a bed of daffodil sky, 
To faint in the light of the sun she loves, 

To faint in his light, and to die. 

All night have the roses heard 

The flute, violin, bassoon ; 
All night has the casement jessamine stirred 

To the dancers dancing in tune ; 
Till a silence fell with the waking bird, 

And a hush with the setting moon. 

I said to the hly, " There ¡s but one 

With whom she has heart to be gay. 
When will the dancers lea ve her alone ? 

She is wear>' of dance and play." 
Now half to the setting moon are gone, 



320 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

And half to the rising day ; 
Low on the sand and loud on the stone 
The last wheel echoes away. 

I said to the rose, "The brief night goes 
In babble and revel and wine. 

O young lord-lover, what sighs are those 
For ene that will never be thine ? 

But mine, but mine," so I swore to the rose, 
" For ever and ever mine." 



ROBERT BROWNING. 

Incident of the French Camp. 

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon : 

A mile or so away 
On a little mound. Napoleón 

Stood on our storming-day ; 
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 

Legs wide, arms locked behind, 
As if to balance the prone brow 

Oppressive with its mind. 

Just as perhaps he mused, " My plans 

That soar, to earth may fall, 
Let once my army-leader Lannes 

Waver at yonder wall " — 
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 
Full-galloping ; ñor bridle drew 

Until he reached the mound. 

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
By just his horse's mane, a boy : 

You hardly could suspect — 
(So tight he kept his lips compressed, 

Scarce any blood carne through) 
You looked twice ere you saw his breast 

Was all but shot ¡n two. 



Robert Browning. 321 

" Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The Marshal's in the market-place, 

And you'll be there anón 
To see your flag-bird flap his vans 

Where I, to heart's desire, 
Perched him ! " The chief's eye flashed ; his plans 

Soared up again Hke fire. 

The chief's eye flashed ; but presently 

Softened itself, as sheathes 
A film the mother-eagle's eye 

When her bruised eaglet breathes ; 
" You're wounded ! " " Nay," the soldier's pride 

Touched to the quick, he said : 
" Fm killed, sire ! " And his chief beside, 

SmiHng the boy fell dead. 

The Lost Leader. 

JusT for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 

Lost all the others, she lets us devote ; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 

So much was theirs who so little allowed : 
How all our copper had gone for his service ! 

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud ! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
Shakspere was of us, Milton was for us, 

Burns, Shelley were with us — they watch from their graves ! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen. 

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 

We shall march prospering — not through his presence ; 

Songs may inspirit us — not from his lyre ; 
Deeds will be done, while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire : 
Blot out his ñame, then, record one lost soul more, 



322 From Chaucer to Tennyson. 

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, 
One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels, 

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God ! 
Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 

There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain, 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 

Never glad confident morning again ! 
Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike gallantly, 

Menace our heart ere we master his own ; 
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, 

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 

Work and Worth. 

[From " Rabbi Ben Ezra."] 

NoT on the vulgar mass 

Called " work " must sentence pass, 

Things done, that took the eye and had the price ; 
O'er which, from level stand, 
The low world laid its hand, 

Found straightway to its mind, could valué in a trice : 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb. 

So passed in making up the main account ; 
All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure, 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's 
amount : 
Thoughts hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act, 

Fancies that broke through language and escaped : 
All I could never be, 
All men ignorad in me, 

This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 



INDEX. 



Addison, Joseph, 127, 146, 152, I55. 

157 #•- 233, 237, 279- 
Akenside, Mark, 164. 
Alfred, King, 10, 15,50. 
Anselm, 11. 

Arnold, Matthew, 19, 23, 196. 
Arnold, Thomas, 199. 
Arthur, King, 15, 47. 
Ascham, Roger, 43, 51, 52, 56, 118. 
Austeii, Jane, 209. 
Bacon, Francis, 71, 75/., 90, 113, 129, 

237, 264. 
Beattie, James, 165, 167, 182. 
Beaumont, Francis, 78, 85, 91, 100, 

io5#., 112, 144, 267. 
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 143. 
Bosweil, James, 170, 172, 173. 
Bourchier, John, 42. 
Bronté, Charlotte, 225, 232. 
Brooke, Arthur, 78. 
Brougham, Henry, 188. 
Browne, Thomas, 75, 113, ii4#-, 116, 

150. 273- 
Browne, William, 78. 
Browning, Eüzabeth Barrett, 182. 
Browning, Robert, 218, 244, 248 _^., 320. 
Bunyan, John, 25, 62, 150^. 
Burke, Edmund, 171, 179, 189, 285. 
Burns, Robert, 45, 179, 182 _¿f., 195, 206, 

220, 240, 290. 
Burton, Robert, 113, 205. 
Butler, Samuel, 139. 
Byron, George, 79, 163, 181, 187, 193, 

194, 195, 200, 204, 210 ff., 217, 218, 

221, 222, 300. 
Campbell, Thomas, 210. 
Carew, Thomas, 124, 125. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 171, 177, 182, 185, 

189, 208, 209, 217, 237, 240 jf., 313. 
Caxton, William, 40 y., 45, 50. 
■Chapman, George, 79. 
'Chatterton, Thomas, 165, i66y., 205. 



Chaucer, Geoffrey, 10, 12, 22, 23, 24, 26, 

28^., 36, 37, 38. 41, 46, 50. 55. 56, 57, 

79, 81, 146, 150, 166, 192, 221, 255. 
Cheke, John, 51. 
Chesterfieid, Lord, 154. 
Churchill, John, 153. 
Coleridge, S. T., 98, 107, 115, I77, 187, 

190, 191, 196, 197 ff., 201, 202, 205, 

215- 239. 295- 
Coletjjohn, 51, 53. 
Collier.jeremy, 144. 
Collins, William, 164, 168, 169, 170, 173, 

178, 205. 
Congreve, William, 142, 154. 
Constable, Henry, 78. 
Coverdale, Miles, 52. 
Cowley, Abraham, 119, 124, 137, 146, 

147. 150- 
Cowper, William, 80, 169, ijgff-, 184. 

195, 196, 2S8. 
Crabbe, George, 195, 196. 
Crashaw, Richard, 119, 123. 
Daniel, Samuel, 78, 80. 
Davenant, William, 137, 140, 145. 
Defoe, Daniel, 160, 173. 
Denham, John, 147. 
De Quincey, Thomas, 115, 187, mxff., 

239- 
Dickens, Charles, 203, 226 #., 231, 233, 

235. 237, 305. 
Donne, John, 119 ff., 145. I49- 
Drayton, Michael, 69, 78, 80, 118. 
Drummond, William, 78. 
Dryden, John, 32, 52, 63, 106, 119, 125, 

130, 138, 141, 142, 143. 145. 147. 148 #•, 

150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 160, 163, 

169. 179, 274- 
Dyer, John, 167, 170, 173. 
Edgeworth, María, 209. 
Eliot, George, 76, 208, 226, 234 if-, 311- 
Elliott, Jane, 49. 
Etherege, George, 142, 143, 144. 

323 



324 



Index. 



Farquhar, George, 142. 
Ferguson, Robert, 182. 
Fielding, Henry, I74#., 178, 209, 232, 

233- 
Fisher, John, 53. 
Fletcher, Giles, 134. 
Fletcher, John, 78, 85, 89, 91, losjf"., 

112, 129, 144, 267. 
Fletcher, Phineas, 119. 
Ford, John, 112. 
Fortescue, John, 40. 
Fox, John, 150. 
Froissart, John, 42. 
Fuller, Thomas, 28, 116, 205. 
Gascoigne, George, 65. 
Gay, John, 233. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 17. 
Gibbon, Edward, 179, 239. 
Gifford, William, 163, 188. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 171, 177, 178, 179, 

209, 233, 283. 
Gosson, Stephen, 67. 
Gower, John, 32, 34, 37, 41. 
Graham, James, 125. 
Grammont, Chevalier de, 144. 
Gray, Thomas, 148, 164, 167, 168, 169, 

170, 173. 178. 205. 287. 
Greene, Robert, 67, 74, 85, 88. 
Grocyn, William, 51. 
Hales, Thomas de, 21. 
Hall, Joseph, 149. 
Harrison, William, 80. 
Harvey, Gabriel, 57. 
Hawes, Stephen, 43, 56. 
Henry of Huntingdon, 14. 
Herbert, George, 119, \2\f, 
Hereford, Nicholas, 27. 
Herrick, Robert, 119, 122/". 
Hobbes, Thomas, 130, 137. 
Holinshed, Ralph, 74, 80. 
Hooker, Richard, 75. 
Howard, Henry, 54. 
Howard, Robert, 143. 
Hume, David, 239. 
Hunt, Leigh, 76, 218. 
Hurd, Richard, 164. 
James I., 36/., 38. 
Jeffrey, Francis, 188, 238. 
Jerrold, Douglas, 76. 
John of Gaunt, 33. 
Johnson, Samuel, 76, 114, 119, 133, 148, 



150, 152, 159, 163, 167, 170 if., 178, 

189. 233, 281. 
Jonson, Ben, 56, 68, 70, 76, 78, 87,91, 

94, 97, loaff., 106, 119, 127, 138, 139, 

230, 266. 
Keats, John, 61, 80, 187, 215, 120 ff. y 

303- 
Killigrew, Thomas, 142. 
Kingsley, Charles, 199, 20S, 225. 
Kyd, Thomas, 85. 
Lamb, Charles, 61, 144, 159, 187, 205,, 

237- 
Landor, W. S., 187, 193, 203^. 
Lanfranc, 11. 

Langland, William, 24^., 29, 32, 48. 
Latimer, Hugh, 53. 
Layamon, 18. 
L'Estrange, 124. 
Lewes, G. H., 235. 
Lewis, M. G., 209. 
Lily, William, 51. 
Linacre, Thomas, 51. 
Locke, John, 130, 137. 
Lockhart, J. G., 188. 
Lodge, Thomas, 74, 85. 
Lovelace, Richard, 124. 
Lydgate, John, 36, 37, 38, 41, 56. 
Lyly, John, óóy., 69, 74, 78, 85. 
Macaulay, T. B., 139, 144, 171, 172, 237. 
Macpherson, James, 165, 205. 
Malory, Thomas, 20, 41/. 
Map, Walter, 19. 
Marlowe, Christopher, 78, 79, 81, 85,. 

86if.,89, 98, III. 
Marston, John, 149. 
Marvell, Andrew, 135, 149. 
Masón, William, 164. 
Malthew of Westminster, 14. 
Maundeville, John, 38 y. 
Mill,J.S., 198. 
Milton, John, 57, 63, 75, 88, 98, 116, 124,. 

126 if., 139, 150, 151, 16S, 169, 170, 173,. 

187, 191, 192, 215, 218, 221, 223, 268. 
Moore, Thomas, 187, 216. 
More, Thomas, 51, 53. 
Morris, William, 23. 
Mulgrave, Earl of, 146. 
Nash, Thomas, 51, 74. 
North, Thomas, 74. 
Occleve, Thomas, 35, 38. 
Ordericus Vilalis, 14, 



Index. 



325 



Ossian, 165, 167. 

Otway, Thonias, 142, 218. 

Overbur>', Thomas, 77. 

Paynter, William, 74. 

Peacock, Reginald, 39. 

Peele, George, 85, 88. 

Pepys, Samuel, 13S, 144, 145. 

Percy, Thomas, 49, 164, 206. 

Philips, Ambrose, 163. 

Pope, Alexander, 80, 125, 146, 149, 151, 

I52> i54#-. 160, 163, 164, 167, 169, 173, 

189, 210, 278. 
Prior, Matthew, 152. 
Prynne, William, 107. 
Purvey, John, 27. 
Quarles, Francis, 119. 
Radcliffe, Anne, 209. 
Raleigh, Walter, 58, 60, 64, 71, 78, 91. 
Ramsay, Alian, 49, 182. 
Reade, Charles, 225. 
Rhymer, Thomas, 145. 
Richardson, Samuel, 173 f., 175, 178, 

233- 
Robert of Gloucester, 14. 
Roscommon, Earl of, 146. 
Rossetti, D. G., 37. 
Royden, Matthew, 71. 
Ruskin, John, 237. 
Sackville, Thomas, 56. 
Scott, Walter, 49, 65, 66, 160, 187, 188, 

I93i 194. 205^., 210, 211, 213, 231, 234, 

239. 246, 297. 
Salden, John, 118. 
Shadwell, Thomas, 142, 145, 148. 
Shakspere, William, 14, 23, 33, 64, 65, 

67, 68, 70, 74, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 

^7<^9ff-i loii 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 

lio, III, 127, 141, 143, 145, 157, 168, 

169, 187, 209, 221, 223, 230, 234, 240, 

243, 244, 250, 260. 
Shelley, P. B., 187, 213, 215, 216 if"., 223, 

260, 299. 
Shenstoiie, William, 167, 173. 
Sheridan, R. B., 178. 
Shirley, James, 112. 
Sidney, Philip, 43, 46, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 

68if.,7i, 78, 91, 117. 
Simeón of Durham, 14. 
Skelton, John, 43/., 56. 
Smith, Sidney, 1S8. 
Smollett, Tobias, 176, 179, 233. 



Southey, Robert, 187, 190, 201. 
Spenser, Edniund, 15, 37, 43, 46, 56, 

57 ff-, 63, 64, 66, 78, 91, 117, 129, 169, 

170, 221, 259. 
Steele, Richard, 152, 157, 233. 
Sterne, Laurence, 114, 153, 159, 176 ff., 

179, 24D. 
Stow, John, 80. 
Suckling, Thomas, 124. 
Surrey, Earl of, 55, 56. 
Swift, Dean, 152, 153, 154, 159 ff., 232, 

233. 234, 243, 275. 
Swinburne, Algernon, 19, 200. 
Sylvester, Joshua, 129, 133. 
Tate, Nahum, 145. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 116/., 130, 150. 
Temple, William, 150, 159. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 10, 19, 20, 230, 244^., 

249, 316. 
Thackeray, W. M., 155, 161, 177, 208, 

212, 226, 230 #., 235, 308. 
Thomson, James, 163, 164, 167, 169, 170, 

181, 182. 
Tourneur, Cyril, 112. 
Turberville, George, 74. 
Tyndale, William, 27, 52, 53. 
Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 164. 
Van Brugh, John, 142. 
Vaughan, Henry, 119, 122. 
Villiers, George, 137, 142, 173. 
Waller, Edmund, 124, 125, 137, 146. 
Walpole, Horace, 164, 167, 170, 209. 
Walton.Izaak, 118. 
Warner, William, 80. 
Warton, Joseph, 169. 
Warton, Thomas, 65, 164, 167, 168. 
Watson, Thomas, 78. 
Webster, John, 89, 91, ni. 
Wiclif, John, 26/., 32, 2,2, 39- 
William of Malmesbury, 14. 
Wilson, John, 188, 201. 
Wither, George, 125, 135, 149. 
Woodville, Anthony, 41. 
Worde, Wynkyn de, 43, 49. 
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 114. 
Wordsworth, William, 49, 78, 131, i6g, 

187, 190, 191 ff., 202, 204, 206, 215, 

220, 222, 292. 
Wotton, Henry, 118. 
Wyat, Thomas, 54, 55, 56. 
Wycherley, William, 137, 142, 143, 144. 



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